Bloomberg Salil Parekh didn’t get much time to settle in after taking over the helm of Infosys Ltd. Since becoming chief executive officer in January, the 53-year-old has crisscrossed three continents to meet with customers and employees to get his hands around the challenges facing India’s iconic tech-services giant. He talked with 48 clients in his first three months — ...
Read More »Malaysia’s IHH seeks time, financials before Fortis bid
Bloomberg IHH Healthcare Bhd. has asked Fortis Healthcare Ltd. for three weeks to complete due diligence ahead of making a potential binding offer, people with knowledge of the matter said, as the takeover battle for India’s second-largest hospital chain escalates. IHH, Asia’s most valuable hospital operator, sent a letter to Fortis’s board on April 16 with the due diligence request ...
Read More »BMW, Tesla to gain as China removes ownership cap
Bloomberg China’s decision to stop putting foreign carmakers in bed with local partners is unlikely to prompt a major unwind anytime time soon. But it dangles the lucrative draw of future wholly-owned future factories. Such a move would benefit new competitors like Tesla Inc. and late China-arrivals like Fiat Chrysler Automobiles with no or limited joint-venture production in China. Luxury ...
Read More »Third-tier cities lead China’s home price gains
Bloomberg China’s home prices rose at the fastest pace in three months in March, fuelled by gains in smaller cities, even as the government maintained a two-year campaign to cool the housing market. New-home prices across 70 cities gained 0.42 percent from a month earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics. That compared ...
Read More »â€˜Pearls imports’ hint at capital flight from India
Bloomberg Runaway jewellers have become somewhat of a staple of news headlines out of India. But reading the small print of trade numbers may tell a new story — flight of capital. A spurt in imports of precious stones and pearls, at a time when gold imports have moderated, has raised the red flag for analysts at Credit Suisse AG, ...
Read More »â€˜China’s Hawaii’ offers visa-free access to 33 more nations
Bloomberg China has extended visa-free access to Hainan for another 33 — mostly European and South American — countries, as President Xi Jinping seeks to boost the tropical province’s popularity among foreign tourists. New regulations expanding the travel privileges to 59 nations come into effect in May, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the State Immigration Administration. Tourists from ...
Read More »IBM turnaround questioned on slow growth of new businesses
Bloomberg IBM’s one-quarter growth streak is already in doubt. Shares of the technology company fell in early trading after it reported narrower profit margins and no revenue growth, excluding help from a weak US dollar. That cast a shadow over an effort to sell more-profitable cloud-based software to revive growth after five years of revenue declines. Though heading in the ...
Read More »AT&T may have an edge over US govt in court battle for Time Warner
Bloomberg AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. may have gained an edge in the biggest merger trial in decades as the companies have exposed weaknesses in the Trump administration’s antitrust lawsuit to block their $85 billion merger, according to lawyers and economists following the battle. As the US rested its case in the fifth week of the trial, AT&T and ...
Read More »Facebook to start complying with EU privacy rules
Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is starting to comply with new privacy rules in Europe. And then, to get ahead of scrutiny everywhere else, the company said it will provide the same protections to the rest of its 2 billion users. Users in Europe this week will get notifications about some of the information they’re sharing, like their religion and political views, ...
Read More »UK inflation at one-year low
Bloomberg UK inflation slowed to the weakest in a year in March, raising questions about how quickly the Bank of England will increase interest rates. Consumer prices rose 2.5 percent from a year earlier, down from 2.7 percent in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. That’s less than economists estimated and below the BOE’s most recent forecast ...
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