LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s payments regulator on Tuesday fined five payments companies including Mastercard a total of 33 million pounds ($45.01 million) for cartel behaviour involving prepaid cards issued to vulnerable people on welfare benefits. Mastercard received the largest fine of 31.56 million pounds ($43.04 million). The other companies fined were allpay, Advanced Payment Solution, Prepaid…
LONDON (Reuters) – British employers added 184,000 staff to their payrolls in December, monthly tax data showed on Tuesday, taking total staff numbers to 1.4% above their level in February 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic. The broader unemployment rate for the three months to the end of November fell to 4.1%, the Office for National…
(Fixes quotation mark in headline) By Akriti Sharma and Ross Kerber (Reuters) -Larry Fink, chief executive of the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock Inc, has defended a shareholder movement that pushes companies to focus on the interests of society as well as profits. In his annual open letter, Fink built on themes he has sounded…
TOKYO (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Corp will build 700,000 cars globally in February, up 10% on the year, but leaving a million vehicles to be made in March if the world’s biggest carmaker is to hit an annual target of 9 million, the Nikkei business daily said. (Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Macau’s Legislative Assembly published the draft of a highly anticipated gaming law bill on Wednesday, providing further details for multibillion-dollar casino operators in the world’s biggest gambling hub. The 44-page document – published in Chinese and Portuguese – comes after the government announced on Friday that the number of new licenses…
By Mark John (Reuters) – Public trust in governments running the world’s democracies has fallen to new lows over their handling of the pandemic and amid a widespread sense of economic pessimism, a global survey has found. The Edelman Trust Barometer, which for two decades has polled thousands of people on trust in their governments,…
BEIJING (Reuters) -Starbucks said on Tuesday it has entered into a partnership with China’s Meituan that will allow its Chinese customers to order coffee delivery via the super-app’s platform. The move will expand the U.S. coffee chain’s delivery footprint in China, which has since 2018 used Alibaba Group’s Ele.me as its exclusive delivery partner. The…
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chief executives of major U.S. passenger and cargo carriers on Monday warned of an impending “catastrophic” aviation crisis in less than 36 hours, when AT&T and Verizon are set to deploy new 5G service. The airlines warned the new C-Band 5G service set to begin on Wednesday could render…
By Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) -The Bank of Japan upgraded its inflation forecasts on Tuesday and said risks to the price outlook were evenly balanced, in a nod to signs the recent commodity-driven rise in inflation was broadening. But with inflation set to remain below its 2% target in the coming years, the BOJ stressed…
By Sonali Paul MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Oil prices rose on Tuesday to a more than seven-year high on worries about possible supply disruptions after Yemen’s Houthi group attacked the United Arab Emirates, escalating hostilities between the Iran-aligned group and a Saudi Arabian-led coalition. The “new geopolitical tension added to ongoing signs of tightness across the…
