Alibaba, China Telecom tie up to sell phones
Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and state-owned China Telecom Corp Ltd have tied up to sell inexpensive smartphones aimed at boosting mobile commerce in smaller cities and rural areas. The phones, dubbed “Tianyi Taobao Shopping Handsets”, will come installed with either an app for easy access to Alibaba’s flagship Taobao online shopping platform or its home-grown YunOS mobile operating system, it said in a statement late on Friday.
The chief executive of France’s telecom leader Orange said on Saturday he believed the price war in the national telecoms sector was coming to a close. Stephane Richard also argued in a radio interview for consolidation in the French telecoms sector, saying a market with three operators would function better than with four. “In France we have among the lowest prices in the world for both fixed and mobile telecoms.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble hinted on Saturday that Berlin was preparing for a possible Greek default, drawing a parallel with the secrecy of German reunification plans in 1989. At a briefing with reporters after a tense meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Greece on Friday, Schaeuble was asked if euro zone finance ministers were working on a “Plan B” in case negotiations on funding with cash-strapped Athens fail.
As the buses carrying European finance ministers left for a gala dinner in the Latvian capital on Friday night, one of the party hung back at the hotel and then wandered off alone into the dusk. Greece’s Yanis Varoufakis had other dinner plans, he said, after a bruising first day of meetings in Riga that underlined his isolation as he tries to avert national bankruptcy. While other ministers were feted
The collapse of the deal opens the door for other possible offers for Time Warner Cable, but also casts heightened regulatory risk on merger activity in the U.S. cable industry, which has been rapidly consolidating in the face of competition from satellite TV and Web-based services. Comcast had argued the merger would bring faster service and better video services to more Americans. Charter Communications Inc lost out on a bid
UBS’s (UBSG.VX) chairman said a default by Greece is seen by the International Monetary Fund as “systemically controllable” and he believed it would have a negligible impact on the Swiss bank itself, according to a newspaper interview published on Saturday. Euro zone finance ministers told Greece on Friday that its leftist government would get no more aid until it agreed a complete economic reform plan. In an interview with Neue
Greece’s governors and other local officials agreed on Saturday to lend cash to the near-bankrupt central government after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras assured them the measure would last for only a short period of time. Greek lawmakers approved a decree late on Friday to force state entities to lend cash to the central government in spite of protests by municipalities and labor unions. The measure, which was approved by 156
Foreign banks are not “queuing up” to buy lenders in Italy after a government reform that is expected to spur a wave of mergers and acquisitions targeting cooperative banks in the euro zone’s third biggest economy, its chief executive said. “I have not seen queues (by foreign banks) to enter Italy,” UBI CEO Victor Massiah told reporters on the sidelines of a shareholder meeting that approved the bank’s 2014 accounts.
The building is home to Futex, one of several so-called “trading farms” in the UK that give training, office space and equipment to people prepared to make short-term trades, mostly within a day, with their own money in the hope of being hired or sponsored for a cut of their profits. Navinder Singh Sarao – who has been accused by U.S. authorities of contributing to the May 2010 “flash crash”
The Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 chalked up record high closes on Friday, propelled by strong results from tech behemoths Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.71 percent to end at …
