China smartphone upstart that beat Apple set to enter West

Bloomberg Vivo, the fast-growing smartphone brand backed by reclusive Chinese billionaire Duan Yongping, will begin selling to Western markets for the first time as it accelerates a global expansion. Emboldened by its success against Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. at home, the company now intends to tackle developed markets with higher-end devices. In coming months, China’s third-largest smartphone brand ...

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Turnbull to woo states to Australia energy plan

Bloomberg Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government will provide modeling to the states in a bid to get them to back its proposed “national energy guarantee” to bolster reliability of Australia’s faltering electricity grid. “It’s in the country’s interest and it’s in the states’ interests to get on board with this,” Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said. Australia’s six states and two ...

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GE’s new CEO vows change after ‘unacceptable’ results

Bloomberg General Electric Co.’s new boss promised “sweeping change” as he delivered a brutal assessment of the 125-year-old manufacturer. Results for the latest quarter are “completely unacceptable,” Chief Executive Officer John Flannery told investors as he slashed the profit forecast and pledged to unload $20 billion of GE businesses. “We need to make some major changes with urgency and a ...

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Aegon scouting for acquisitions including rival ASR

Bloomberg Aegon NV, the Dutch insurer that generates most of its business from the US, is scouting for acquisitions and has looked at companies including smaller rival ASR Nederland NV amid consolidation in the domestic market, according to people familiar with the matter. As part of its search for potential targets, The Hague-based Aegon recently made an informal approach to ...

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Florida man gets 16 months over bitcoin bank hacking plan

Bloomberg A Florida software engineer was sentenced to 16 months in prison for helping run an illegal Bitcoin exchange suspected of laundering money for a group of hackers who targeted financial and publishing firms including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Dow Jones & Co. Yuri Lebedev, 39, helped operate Coin.mx, which tricked banks into processing bitcoin transactions by disguising them ...

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MiFID II laws to force traders for passport number

Bloomberg A potentially explosive battle is brewing over a seldom-discussed aspect of the looming MiFID II laws, which will force traders of any European asset class to hand over personal identification such as passport numbers to every venue they trade on. The massive data-collection exercise will drag in tens of thousands of investors and traders, who some trading venues say ...

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An $86 billion UK pension problem may solve itself

Bloomberg For UK Plc, the sting of Brexit comes with an unexpected bonus. With no effort on their part, the biggest British businesses may see pension deficits that have burdened them for years be practically wiped out if long-term bond yields rise 50 basis in the next year and they budget for slowing gains in life expectancy, according to estimates ...

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Japan election: Abe’s coalition retains two-thirds majority

Bloomberg Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling coalition retained its two-thirds parliamentary majority in Sunday’s general election, unofficial results showed, bolstering his chances at becoming Japan’s longest-serving leader. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito won at least 310 of the 465 up for grabs, according to results shown on public broadcaster NHK. Opposition parties split the rest, with the ...

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Trump: Raqqa victory a ‘critical breakthrough’

WASHINGTON / Reuters US President Donald Trump hailed the defeat of IS figh-ters in their self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa as “a crit- ical breakthrough” in a worldwide campaign against the militants. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had formally announced Raqqa’s liberation from IS after four months of battles and said the city would be part of a decentralized federal ...

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Iraq, Russia to discuss Kurdistan oil projects

MOSCOW / Reuters Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Iraqi counterpart Ibrahim al-Jaafari will meet in Moscow on October 23 to discuss the situation in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement. Moscow is for constructive dialogue between Baghdad and Kurdistan, the ministry added. During al-Jaafari’s visit to Moscow on Oct. 23-25, the minister will ...

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