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  Bloomberg European Union officials are ruling out any discussions with UK Prime Minister Theresa May over a post-Brexit trade deal until she agrees to settle Britain’s financial commitments to the bloc. In a sign the EU is toughening its stance as Britain prepares to trigger two years of negotiations, two European officials familiar with the plan said in the ...

  Bloomberg Output at US manufacturers rose in February for a sixth consecutive month, underscoring a sustained rebound in the industry. The 0.5 percent gain at factories, which make up 75 percent of overall industrial output, matched the prior month’s advance, marking the best back-to-back performance in three years, a Federal Reserve report showed. Total industrial production, which includes mines ...

  Bloomberg About 1,500 workers at three Indiana factories are facing layoffs despite hopes that President Donald Trump would convince the companies to reverse plans for moving production to Mexico. United Technologies confirmed that the first wave of about 50 layoffs happened last week at its electronics plant that had about 700 workers in Huntington. The plant in the northeastern ...

  Should you trust economists? For many people nowadays, the answer is “no.” Economists failed to predict the Great Recession. Their prescriptions — quantitative easing, for example — didn’t seem to help speed the recovery much. During the past three decades, a lot of their big policy ideas — financial deregulation, tax cuts, privatization and the free movement of capital ...

  Even Inditex SA can’t defy gravity forever. The Spanish owner of the Zara fashion chain is still delivering the sort of sales growth rivals can only dream about. Same-store sales rose 10 percent in the year through January, the fastest rate in 14 years. By contrast, many competitors are struggling to generate growth on the same basis. But the ...

  China is nothing if not creative in protecting its local industries. Although it has liberalized its economy in recent years, it has also erected a sophisticated set of barriers to safeguard companies it views as national champions. Increasingly, this is a counterproductive approach. The usual method of assessing protectionism is to look at metrics such as tariff rates. And ...

  Bloomberg Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. set a target to save 30 percent in employee costs at its Hong Kong head office as part of the biggest revamp in two decades, amid mounting competition that caused the carrier to post its first annual loss in eight years. The savings will come from changes to middle to senior management that will ...

  Bloomberg British Airways owner IAG SA will begin offering cut-price inter-continental flights from June using a new airline to be branded ‘Level’ that could operate more than 30 aircraft. The startup will initially connect Barcelona with Los Angeles and Oakland in California, the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, with tickets priced from 99 ...

  Bloomberg Marks & Spencer Group Plc (M&S) is severing ties to financial public-relations adviser Finsbury at the end of March as the London-based retailer seeks to cut costs. M&S’s internal press-relations team will take over responsibility for the work Finsbury has been carrying out since the WPP Plc-owned agency was hired by former Chief Executive Officer Marc Bolland in ...

  NEW YORK / AP JC Penney listed for the first time the 138 locations it will shutter in the coming months as the retailer seeks to cut costs and improve its profitability. Like other department stores, JC Penney Co. is hurting as more people shop online instead of heading to the mall. The closures are part of the company’s ...