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Bloomberg The US Supreme Court agreed to hear Apple Inc.’s bid to kill an antitrust lawsuit over the market for iPhone apps in a case that could shield e-commerce companies from consumer claims over high commissions. The lawsuit accuses Apple of monopolising the app market so it can charge excessive commissions of 30 percent. Apple, backed by the Trump administration, ...

Bloomberg LaSalle Hotel Properties picked Blackstone Group LP as its preferred suitor, thwarting months of efforts by Pebblebrook Hotel Trust to buy the luxury-hotel owner, most recently for more than $4 billion. The Blackstone transaction values the company at $4.8 billion, LaSalle said on Monday in a statement. LaSalle’s board deemed a June 11 offer from Pebblebrook “substantially similar” to ...

Bloomberg The first punches have been thrown in a potential trade war and now Xi Jinping is poised to match Donald Trump with a tit for tat response. The next flurry of jabs may be imminent. In his announcement of tariffs on Chinese goods on June 16, Trump vowed additional duties if China retaliated — which Beijing immediately did. Details ...

Bloomberg Ivan Duque, a 41-year-old lawyer and former senator who wants to modify parts of a peace process and cut corporate taxes, will be Colombia’s next president following a decisive election victory on June 17. Duque, who spent half his adult life in Washington, is the protege of former President Alvaro Uribe, a polarising security hard-liner. Whether he’ll be able ...

Bloomberg In their first two weeks in power, Italy’s populist leaders sparked a dispute with France over immigration and threatened to scupper a landmark EU trade pact with Canada. It’s hardly the way to make friends with European partners in key deciding positions when Italy seeks approval for the big-spending budget plan it will submit to Brussels in four months. ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted a two-week deadline to win agreement on tougher migration policy, a concession to her Bavarian coalition partner that eases an immediate standoff without removing the threat of further government tension down the road. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who heads Bavaria’s Christian Social Union party, insists the chancellor reach a deal by the end of June ...

Bloomberg Theresa May is surrounded. On one side, the UK prime minister has the European Union, sharpening its knives to defend the club of 27 remaining members against British “cherry picking” during Brexit talks. On the other side is her own Conservative party, split into two feuding tribes, either one of which could topple her from power. It’s the domestic ...

Bloomberg Democratic Republic of Congo opposition leader Moise Katumbi said the authorities revoked his passport and won’t allow him to replace it. Katumbi was advised by Belgian airport services, after returning from a trip to Israel, that his semi-biometric passport had been withdrawn from the system. A request to the Congolese Embassy in Belgium for a full biometric passport was ...

This week was billed as the most important of the year in terms of the global economy, with the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan (BoJ) all meeting to set monetary policy, high level economic data out of the US ranging from inflation to retail sales, the fallout from the disastrous Group of Seven (G-7) meeting, ...

You wouldn’t know it from the government’s optimistic pronouncements, but China’s banks are still under significant stress. Although the latest plan to help them out won’t solve any fundamental problems, it will buy time — maybe enough to come up with better ideas. By several measures, Chinese banks are strained. Their official loan–to-deposit ratio increased from 65.8 percent in June ...