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Bloomberg Matteo Salvini is in hot water, and his coalition ally and sometime-rival may be about to let him off the hook. The Five Star Movement, which governs Italy in a contentious coalition along with Salvini’s League party, is preparing to bow to pressure from the anti-immigration deputy premier and block a legal case sparked by his refusal to let ...

Bloomberg The world’s biggest oil companies are pumping out cash like crude’s at $100 a barrel again, and investors love it. Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Chevron Corp and BP Plc smashed analysts’ earnings estimates for the fourth quarter, giving investors assurance that their dividends and buybacks are secure even with oil trading near $60. Those companies together ...

Bloomberg China’s upstart e-commerce company Pinduoduo Inc. (PDD) and its shareholders filed to sell more than 50 million shares in a secondary offering that could raise about $1.5 billion after the company’s public debut last year. The Shanghai-based company plans to sell 37 million American depository shares, while investors market 14.8 million, according to a securities filing. Its shares closed ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s economy grew faster than economists expected last quarter, showing resilience in the face of a series of interest-rate hikes and weaker global demand. Gross domestic product (GDP) rose 5.18 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago, compared with the 5.1 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. That took expansion for the whole year ...

Bloomberg China’s back buying more US soybeans just days after the last round of purchases by the world’s top importer. State-run buyer Cofco Corp. bought almost 1 million metric tons of the oilseed, while Sinograin purchased more than a million tons, the two companies said in separate statements. That follows an announcement that they had purchased 2 million tons from ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. is buying back as much as 600 billion yen ($5.5 billion) of stock, as founder Masayoshi Son steps up efforts to close the disparity between what he thinks the company is worth versus its market value. Proceeds from the 2.4 trillion yen initial public offering (IPO) of its telecommunications business in December will be used to ...

Bloomberg Every time Bangkok fruit seller Veerachai Roopsuwanakul tries to buy an air purifier, he gets the same response: “Out of stock.” “We never imagined the air could get so bad,” said Veerachai, who now wears a face mask to filter out dust. “We can’t find a purifier in shops or online.” The Thai capital is grappling with a second ...

Bloomberg Guaranteed jobs, health care, and housing are in a draft of the Green New Deal environmental package set to be unveiled by Democrats this week, but the proposal doesn’t explicitly include the ban on fossil fuels called for by some supporters. Instead, the draft of the much anticipated resolution being crafted by Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York representative, ...

Bloomberg London notched up 16.2 billion pounds ($21 billion) of investment in commercial real estate last year, beating out Manhattan for the top spot globally despite mounting anxiety about Brexit. In fact, the pound’s 13 percent decline against the dollar since Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union, together with enduring demand from tenants for office space, have proven ...

Bloomberg Google parent Alphabet Inc. warned that its business may be damaged by changing data privacy practices, new digital advertising polices and software bugs that leak user information. The company filed its annual report and added language that suggests it is adjusting to stepped-up regulatory scrutiny and evolving consumer attitudes toward data and privacy online. “Changes to our data privacy ...