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Bloomberg British firms that get foreign direct investment (FDI) are more productive, especially small and medium-sized businesses. Experimental data from the Office for National Statistics showed that small firms that received money from overseas were 147.2 percent more productive on average than their counterparts. Medium firms saw a 197.4 percent boost, the report said. While just 1.1 percent of British ...

Bloomberg Sonos Inc., the wireless speaker pioneer taking on Amazon.com Inc., Google and Apple Inc., plans to raise as much as $264.1 million in its upcoming initial public offering. While the wireless speakers market is booming — Sonos says its customers listen to about 70 hours of content a month — competition has increased since the company introduced its first ...

Bloomberg Google is still raking in marketing dollars from advertisers, propelling the online search giant to another strong quarter in the face of costly regulatory trouble in Europe. The shares jumped as much as 6.1 percent in extended trading, putting them on course for a record. Parent company Alphabet Inc. reported second-quarter sales, minus partner payouts, of $26.24 billion during ...

Bloomberg Italian coffee maker Illycaffe SpA has attracted interest from suitors including JAB Holding Co. and Nestle SA, but the family owners have so far rebuffed approaches, according to people familiar with the matter. JAB, which has built a coffee empire through a series of acquisitions, is interested in acquiring all of the Trieste-based coffee roaster, according to the people, ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. will double the amount of space it occupies in London as technology firms continue to expand in the UK. The new office buildings in the city’s King’s Cross district will have room for more than 6,000 people, compared with a target of 2,300 workers by the end of this year. Facebook’s statement did not say how many ...

Bloomberg Apollo Global Management LLC will buy hospital chain LifePoint Health Inc. for $65 a share, expanding the private equity firm’s ambitions in rural health care. The deal values LifePoint at $2.52 billion, or $5.6 billion including debt and a minority interest, the firms said in a statement. The price is a 36 percent premium to where LifePoint shares closed ...

Bloomberg Boeing Co. investors can bank on the planemaker for another stellar quarter. Strong deliveries in the second quarter, several strategic deals and a stable cash flow has ensured big returns for Boeing shareholders over the past year, with the stock gaining nearly 67 percent, compared to a 14 percent bump for the rest of the market. While intensifying concerns ...

Bloomberg Walmart Inc.’s employees have adopted money-management tools from Even Responsible Finance Inc. at a faster pace than anticipated, prompting a fresh round of funding to expand the fintech startup. More than 200,000 Walmart employees in the US use Even’s app to manage their finances or access their wages early, the Oakland-based startup said, and almost half of that group ...

Bloomberg Switzerland’s Lindt & Spruengli AG plans $200 million US investment offensive to further challenge Hershey Co. and Mars in that market. The maker of Lindor chocolate balls is expanding a plant in Stratham, New Hampshire, over the next four years, constructing high-tech production lines for premium chocolate, the company said. The site will eventually have more than 1 million ...

Bloomberg Toys ‘R’ Us’s fired workers last week won the right to negotiate for severance money in bankruptcy court, in an unusual victory. They may end up getting nothing. Before much money can be paid to the retailer’s 33,000 former employees, senior lenders need to collect about $1 billion. For now, the staffers can try to tap a pool of ...