Bloomberg Europe warned the world’s biggest tech and advertising companies that they need to intensify efforts to combat disinformation on their platforms ahead of European elections, or face regulation. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, acknowledged that companies such as Alphabet Inc’s Google, Twitter Inc and Facebook Inc, had made “some progressâ€, in particular with removing fake accounts and ...
Read More »T-Mobile to defend Sprint deal before Democratic-led House
Bloomberg T-Mobile US Inc Chief Executive Officer John Legere and Sprint Corp Chairman Marcelo Claure agreed to testify about their planned $26.5 billion merger before a Democratic-controlled House panel that is expected to bring tougher scrutiny to the consolidation of telecom giants. The hearing, scheduled for February 13, gives Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, the chairman of the House ...
Read More »Apple’s next forecast to likely show sales are still falling
Bloomberg Anyone looking for an upbeat forecast from Apple Inc is likely to be disappointed when the company’s results were expected on Tuesday. The company is set to report its first holiday quarter sales decline since the iPhone launched, and analysts are predicting revenue will keep shrinking in the current quarter. In early January, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook forecast ...
Read More »The shutdown shows US citizens need to save more
Now that the government shutdown is over, perhaps it is appropriate to consider a delicate question: Is it still OK to tell people they need to save more money? It’s an issue that came to the fore during the last five weeks, when hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, and many contractors, didn’t get paid, leaving many of them ...
Read More »China wants to dominate internet
For the past year, the US and China have been engaged in a wide-ranging trade war. Nominally, the dispute concerns intellectual-property violations, forced technology transfers and other unfair practices. In reality, though, this clash is a symptom of a much larger strategic showdown — one in which Chinese President Xi Jinping seeks “decisive victory.†Aided by technology, China is embarking ...
Read More »Now banks are looking worried about Brexit
The exodus from London is getting real. Ever since the UK voted to leave the European Union (EU) in June 2016, people have been watching for signs of how the prospect might affect London’s role as a global financial center. It stood to reason that it should: Assuming the breakup meant that the UK units of global banks would lose ...
Read More »Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten’ needs limits
An adviser to Europe’s top court issued an opinion this month on behalf of liberty, judicial restraint and common sense. Here’s hoping the court heeds his recommendations. At issue was the so-called right to be forgotten, a muddled and misguided legal concept under which any citizen of the European Union can ask search-engine companies like Google to take down links ...
Read More »Why India’s next budget shouldn’t be excessively bold
On February 1 in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will present its last federal budget before general elections are held in a few months. Unlike most other budgets, this typically isn’t a high-octane affair; governments are discouraged from locking their successors into any new spending or taxes. An “interim†budget, as it’s called, tries to avoid committing spending for ...
Read More »United Technologies offers air cover amid growth problems
United Technologies Corp.’s latest results suggest aerospace is still a safe place as worries mount about a slowdown in global growth. The $96 billion conglomerate that’s planning on splitting itself into three reported a staggering 11 percent gain in revenue excluding the impact of M&A and currency swings for the final months of 2018. That was the first time quarterly ...
Read More »Renault-Nissan’s loveless marriage will survive
Under Carlos Ghosn, the independent auto analyst Maryann Keller was telling me the other day, the alliance of Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. was a little like Yugoslavia during the reign of Marshal Tito. Yugoslavia was a disparate collection of Slavic republics — Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and so on — with natural tribal enmities. In the decades after World ...
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