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Bloomberg The French government told companies to begin preparing for all Brexit scenarios, including no deal between the European Union and the UK. At a closed-door meeting at the finance ministry, Secretary of State Agnes Pannier-Runacher recommended business leaders start identifying measures to limit the impact of Brexit and begin alerting their suppliers. France hopes Michel Barnier’s efforts to reach ...

Bloomberg UK employers’ economic confidence is weakening as the nation prepares to leave the European Union. The net balance of employers with a positive outlook for the economy fell to the lowest since February, the the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said on Wednesday. However, the confidence of employers to make hiring and investment decisions remained positive during the three months ...

Bloomberg Germany’s economy started the fourth quarter on the back foot, with private-sector activity slowing to the weakest since 2015 and factory orders contracting for the first time in four years. The composite Purchasing Managers’ Index for Europe’s largest economy dropped to 52.7 in October from 55.0 last month, according to a flash reading released by IHS Markit on Wednesday. ...

To every complex human problem, there is a solution that is neat, plausible — and wrong. That observation by H.L. Mencken came to mind as rumours resurfaced this week that pro-Brexit Conservatives were plotting to oust their leader, Prime Minister Theresa May, by triggering a no-confidence vote in Parliament. Getting rid of May might be a neat solution to the ...

Strong US economic growth has encouraged the Trump administration to escalate the trade war with China, putting increasing pressure on that nation’s economy and financial markets. At the same time, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates last month for the eighth time since December 2015, and a majority of policy makers even see the need to boost rates above the ...

Risk and return go together, as any good investment manager will tell you. That’s the dilemma facing overseas private bankers serving China: Household wealth of $29 trillion presents an unmissable opportunity, but the hazards of tapping it may also be unusually high. Banks including Julius Baer Group Ltd. and Citigroup Inc. have told relationship managers to delay or reconsider travel ...

The European Commission has rejected Italy’s budget for flouting Europe’s fiscal rules, and has given Rome three weeks to try again. It’s the first time this has been done, and the move is risky because it sets up a political confrontation that could end badly. But the rules are there for a reason, and if the system is to work, ...

A few years ago, with funding for startups surging, some people worried that the US was in the midst of a new technology bubble. Calmer heads realised that even if venture capitalists were being a little too carefree with their cash, the result probably wouldn’t look anything like the dot-com bubble and crash of 2000. Price-to-earnings multiples for public tech ...

France’s Ingenico Group SA straddles two fintech worlds: An old-school one of credit card payment terminals, and a shiny new one of all-digital financial transactions. The company’s expensive attempts to focus on the latter have helped knock about a quarter off its share price this year, while upstarts like Adyen NV have soared. The decline in Ingenico’s value has opened ...

Last month, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, told the Senate Intelligence Committee he believes “the people use Twitter as they would a public square and they often have the same expectations that they would have of any public space.” But for all his vows of openness, the platform is making it increasingly difficult and expensive for academics to access tweets ...