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Global banks are rushing to plant their flags in China. That doesn’t guarantee they’ll be winners. Last week, JPMorgan Chase & Co. lodged an application to take a majority stake in a securities company, having exited a venture where it was a junior partner. The Wall Street firm follows UBS Group AG and Nomura Holdings Inc., which were the first ...

Fujifilm Holdings Corp. should see the big picture. The Japanese company may have lost face in being beaten by activists, but the collapse of its $6.1 billion takeover of Xerox Corp. is a relief. Management can now go back to focusing on growth, rather than fighting the likes of Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason. The attempt to double down on ...

Can China, Lisbon, Brussels and international shareholders all get on? Last week’s bid for Portuguese power generator EDP-Energias de Portugal SA by China’s biggest clean energy group throws contrasting agendas into stark relief. Lisbon appears intensely relaxed about China Three Gorges Corp.’s 9.1 billion-euro ($11 billion) buyout plan. But shareholders, the European Commission and possible counter-bidders stand in the Chinese ...

Neither this year’s impressive corporate earnings results nor the synchronized pickup in global growth nor record levels of stock buybacks by companies has led to impressive gains in stocks. Despite a seven-day winning streak, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the May 11 trading session just 0.03 percent above where it started the year. It’s a similar story for the ...

Cracks are beginning to appear in the investment theses pinned to the future of robots and the rise of machines. Over the past 30 years, the cost of robots, now a feature of almost any production line, has fallen by about 50 percent, according to McKinsey & Co. Demand from industries from automotive to food, where the marginal value of ...

It’s been nearly two years since the UK voted to leave the European Union. But the intervening period has done nothing to resolve the question of what that should mean. Consider the latest Brexit-related fracas, which has seen members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet publicly squabbling about Britain’s future trade relationship with Europe. For many Brexit supporters, the debate ...

Bloomberg The US dollar’s resurgence is running on fumes. A short squeeze that sparked the greenback’s fastest rise in 18 months has fizzled out, according to Wall Street strategists, who warn of mounting bearish conditions for the currency: paltry domestic inflation, economic resilience overseas and the potential escalation of trade tensions. For now, call last week’s sideways move in the ...

Bloomberg India’s inflation accelerated more than estimated in April, providing ammunition to hawks in the central bank to tighten monetary policy and fuelling a selloff in bonds. Consumer prices rose 4.6 percent in April from a year earlier, the statistics ministry said in a statement in New Delhi, higher than the 4.4 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of ...

Bloomberg Credit Agricole SA’s trading revenue slumped in the first three months of the year, squeezing earnings at its investment bank. A “more difficult environment” in capital markets and a stronger euro weighed on its performance, Credit Agricole said in a statement on Tuesday. Revenue also suffered from the bank taking a more “selective” approach to employing its capital, which ...

Bloomberg Nigerian inflation eased for the 15th straight month in April, moving closer to the central bank’s target and expanding room for monetary-policy makers to consider trimming their key interest rate. Consumer-price growth in Africa’s most populous nation slowed to 12.5 percent from a year earlier compared with 13.3 percent in March, the Abuja-based National Bureau of Statistics said in ...