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FRANKFURT / Reuters Springer Nature, the publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is planning to raise 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) by selling new shares in an initial public offering (IPO), also providing an oppo-rtunity for its private equity owner to cash in. While buyout group BC Partners will sell some of its shares in the listing, German ...

Bloomberg Canada’s export financing agency is giving a vote of confidence to the nation’s economy even in the face of growing trade tensions, raising its projections for sales abroad in its semi-annual forecast report. Export Development Canada predicts the export of goods will grow 6 percent this year, up from a prediction of 4 percent growth six mon- ths ago, ...

London / Reuters Avast, the world’s largest consumer antivirus supplier by customers, said it will apply to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange in what could be a blockbuster float expected to value the company at around $4 billion. The listing, which is anticipated in early May, will see a free float of at least 25 percent of ...

Bloomberg The UK property market is wilting from lack of demand, leaving home prices unchanged for a second month in March. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said its gauge of prices remained at zero, with declines in London and the southeast being offset by gains in the East Midlands, Northern Ireland and Wales. Years of rampant price gains have ...

Bloomberg As recently as January, trading Europe was a pretty straightforward prospect as the euro gained, stocks joined the global rally, and credit spreads ground ever-tighter. What a difference a few months makes. The best year in a decade in terms of euro-area growth has given way to a series of surprisingly weak economic readings across the 19-nation bloc. The ...

A word of advice for Congress as it ponders new schemes for internet regulation after the ‘perp walk’ this week of Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg: Don’t do it. Zuckerberg is a very tempting target. His serial apologies show how Facebook became so entangled in its corporate mission to ‘bring the world closer together’ that it stopped putting the customer first. ...

One under-appreciated factor behind Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s success as Indian prime minister has been the tailwind he’s received from low oil prices. Brent crude averaged $99.43 a barrel during his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s second term in office, putting pressure on an economy that’s heavily dependent on imports. It began its precipitous decline from those levels just weeks after ...

It’s time to face facts. Interest-rate arbitrage no longer works — the Hong Kong dollar is being driven more by money flows from China. The city’s currency fell to HK$7.85 per dollar last week — the weak end of its permitted band for the first time since the range was imposed in 2005. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it ...

When you consider what we know so far about the tariffs the Trump administration has recently considered imposing on Chinese goods, you might be tempted to think the retail industry shouldn’t be in panic mode. Yes, items such as televisions and dishwashers are on the list of products the US plans to tax. But, so far at least, key products ...

George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan continues to grab the occasional headline with his thesis that formal education is mostly wasted time and money. Caplan’s book, “The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money,” has been highly controversial. I have taken issue with his premise that people pay for college in order to ...