Category: Business

Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N) said on Friday it was compliant with tax laws, a week after federal law enforcement officials raided three of the company's buildings in connection with a probe into the heavy machinery manufacturer's offshore tax practices.The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has challenged the company's taxes for the years 2007-2012, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) self-driving car unit Waymo on Friday added a new patent claim to its intellectual property lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc and requested a preliminary injunction to stop the ride-sharing service from using what it says is proprietary information, a court filing showed.The two Silicon Valley companies are fighting over technology that is seen as part of the foundation of the future of transportation, self-driving vehicles.The fight is also shaping up as a rematch of legal titans from

LOS ANGELES Starbucks Corp on Friday said its business has not been hurt by a social media boycott campaign started in response to the chain's promise to hire 10,000 refugees globally over the next five years.Starbucks made its Jan. 29 refugee hiring announcement on the heels of President Donald Trump's first executive order that temporarily banned travel from seven mostly Muslim nations. The move angered some Trump supporters, who called on other customers to stop frequenting the coffee chain.Matt Ryan,

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss | NEW YORK NEW YORK The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday denied a request to list what would have been the first U.S. exchange-traded fund built to track bitcoin, the digital currency.Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been trying for more than three years to convince the SEC to let it bring the

SYDNEY Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk spoke with the premier of South Australia on Saturday after the tech entrepreneur offered to install $25 million of battery storage within 100 days to prevent recurring blackouts that have disrupted the state.The proposal follows a string of power outages, including a blackout that left industry crippled for up to two weeks and stoked fears of more outages across the national electricity market due to tight supplies."Just spoke with Premier of South Australia (Jay

U.S. used-auto retailer Carvana LLC, which allows customers to pick up cars they buy on the internet from vending machine-like towers, has tapped investment banks for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The move comes as more consumers become comfortable with online used-car purchases. TrueCar Inc (TRUE.O), for example, a car-shopping service that matches buyers with dealers online, has seen its shares rise 150 percent in the last 12 months.Carvana has hired Wells Fargo &

Bank shares have been the runaway winners of the post-election U.S. stock market boom as investors wagered that higher interest rates, lighter regulation, lower taxes and faster economic growth would boost profits for lenders.Up 32 percent since the election of Donald Trump, the S&P 500's bank index .SPXBK has outpaced the wider market's gain by roughly 3-to-1. Now, however, a changing dynamic in the bond market as the U.S. Federal Reserve gears up to raise interest rates at a faster

By Caroline Valetkevitch | NEW YORK NEW YORK U.S. stocks rose on Friday after a solid jobs report pointed to strength in the domestic economy and supported expectations the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates next week.Indexes ended lower for the week, however, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq breaking a six-week streak of gains.Government data showed 235,000 jobs were added

By Lucia Mutikani | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. employers hired workers at a robust pace in February, beating expectations, and wages grinded higher, which could give the Federal Reserve the green light to raise interest rates next week despite slowing economic growth.Nonfarm payrolls increased by 235,000 jobs last month as the construction sector recorded its largest gain in nearly 10 years due

DETROIT Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) pleaded guilty on Friday to three felony counts as part of a $4.3 billion plea agreement reached with the Justice Department in January over the automaker's massive diesel emissions scandal.VW general counsel Manfred Doess made the plea on the company's behalf after he said at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Detroit that he was authorized by the board of directors of VW to enter a guilty plea."Your honor, VW AG is pleading guilty to

By Kentaro Hamada and Makiko Yamazaki | TOKYO TOKYO The Japanese government, fretting over the future of Toshiba Corp's flagship memory chips unit, is prepared to block a sale to bidders it deems a risk to national security, sources said, a stance that gives U.S. suitors a major advantage.The government would use Japan's foreign exchange and foreign trade laws to control

By Sonali Paul | MELBOURNE MELBOURNE Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk on Friday offered to save Australia's most renewable-energy dependent state from blackouts by installing 100 megawatt hours worth of battery storage within 100 days of signing a contract.The offer follows a string of power outages in the state of South Australia, including a blackout that left industry crippled for up

By Shinichi Saoshiro | TOKYO TOKYO Asian stocks edged up and the dollar rose to 1-1/2-month highs versus the yen on Friday, ahead of the closely-watched U.S. non-farm payrolls report due later in the day.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 0.2 percent, taking cues from a modest bounce in Wall Street overnight.Japan's Nikkei climbed more than 1 percent

By Alexandra Ulmer | CARACAS CARACAS A World Bank tribunal order for Venezuela to pay $1.4 billion in damages to Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) over nationalizations has been annulled, a lawyer for the government said on Thursday."We were confident all along that our position was correct and are very pleased that the annulment committee agreed," Venezuela's lawyer George Kahale told Reuters

By Jonathan Stempel | NEW YORK NEW YORK Former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine defended his big bet on European sovereign debt that was a major factor in the collapse of his company MF Global Holdings Ltd, and said the auditor of the futures and commodities brokerage should have flagged any accounting problems.Corzine, also a former New Jersey senator and Goldman

By Toby Sterling | AMSTERDAM AMSTERDAM Dutch paints and coatings maker Akzo Nobel NV (AKZO.AS) rejected a 21 billion euro ($22 billion) bid from larger U.S. rival PPG Industries Inc (PPG.N) on Thursday, saying instead it wanted to "unlock value" by spinning off its chemicals business.PPG's unsolicited offer comes just days before an election where the vulnerability of the biggest Dutch

By Jessica DiNapoli and Makiko Yamazaki | NEW YORK/TOKYO NEW YORK/TOKYO U.S. nuclear firm Westinghouse Electric Co LLC has hired bankruptcy attorneys, in a sign that owner Toshiba Corp (6502.T) is more seriously weighing a Chapter 11 filing as an option to help it rein in a multibillion dollar financial maelstrom.People familiar with the matter said the nuclear engineering company had

By Adam Jourdan and Eric Walsh | SHANGHAI/WASHINGTON SHANGHAI/WASHINGTON China has granted preliminary approval for 38 trademarks linked to Donald Trump, documents on China's state trademark office show, giving the U.S. President and his family protection were they to develop the "Trump" brand in the market.The trademarks - which in theory cover a wide sweep of businesses from hotels to mobile

MEXICO CITY Billionaire Carlos Slim's America Movil said on Wednesday that the Mexican telecommunications regulator had stepped up antitrust rules against the company, including ordering it to separate out part of its fixed-line infrastructure.America Movil, controlled by the family of Slim, has been subject to tougher regulations since 2014 as part of a sweeping sector reform aimed at making the market more competitive.It said the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) ordered the company to create an independent entity from fixed-line unit

By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Trevor Hunnicutt | NEW YORK NEW YORK Investors are betting market regulators will approve what would be the first U.S. exchange-traded fund to track the price of bitcoin.From investment funds to wealthy individuals and even a Las Vegas strip club, the bitcoin ETF is generating a lot of buzz for a financial product. The surge in

LOS ANGELES Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) Chief Executive Bob Iger on Wednesday said his seat on President Trump's business advisory council provides an opportunity to voice opinions that will benefit the company and its shareholders.Iger, in response to a question at the company's annual shareholder meeting, said he did not believe his membership "supports or endorses" Trump's policies.

By Yashaswini Swamynathan U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday as investors focused on Friday's crucial nonfarm payrolls report after a better-than-expected private hiring report strengthened chances of a rate increase next week. Financial stocks rose after the ADP National Employment report showed that the U.S. private sector added 298,000 jobs last month, blowing past economists' average estimate of 190,000.The S&P

A government watchdog group, Public Citizen, said on Wednesday it will ask lawmakers to investigate whether billionaire investor Carl Icahn should have been subject to lobbying disclosure laws when he advised President Donald Trump to overhaul the U.S. biofuels program.Icahn, an unpaid adviser to Trump on regulation, submitted a proposal to Trump last month to change the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard by shifting the burden of blending biofuels into gasoline away from oil refining companies, and further down the supply

SAN DIEGO Major aircraft leasing companies have offered a lukewarm response to proposals by Boeing to build a bigger version of its 737 MAX family to counter the Airbus A321neo.Boeing has begun offering the model code-named 737 MAX 10X to airlines, saying it would be the most efficient single-aisle jetliner in the business - a claim disputed by Airbus.Steven Udvar-Hazy, executive chairman of Air Lease, who is regarded as one of the industry's most influential voices, questioned the logic of

By Saikat Chatterjee | HONG KONG HONG KONG Asian stocks edged lower on Wednesday after a strong start to the week due to profit-taking as investors lacked conviction to buy risky assets before a U.S. policy meeting next week that may see interest rates rising for the second time in three months.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan eased 0.1

By Jennifer Ablan | NEW YORK NEW YORK Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer at DoubleLine Capital, said on Tuesday he expects the Federal Reserve to begin a campaign this month of "old school" sequential interest rate hikes until "something breaks," such as a U.S. recession.Gundlach, who oversees more than $101 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine, said U.S. economic data support a

By Jonathan Stempel | NEW YORK NEW YORK PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP [PWC.UL] pinned the blame for MF Global Holdings Ltd's collapse squarely on the commodity brokerage and its former chief executive, Jon Corzine, at the start on Tuesday of a trial over whether the auditor should pay about $3 billion for its alleged negligence.Jurors are considering a demand by MF Global's bankruptcy

Snap Inc's shares fell as much as 10.4 percent on Tuesday, opening at their lowest since a blockbuster market debut last week.Snap's shares hit a low of $21.30 in early trading on Tuesday, wiping out more than $9 billion of the company's market capitalization from Friday's high. Shares surged 44 percent in a hotly anticipated listing on Thursday, valuing the parent of Snapchat, an app popular with young people for its disappearing messages, at $28.3 billion, on par with CBS

By Foo Yun Chee | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS An EU court agreed with United Parcel Service (UPS.N) on Tuesday that the EU had wrongly blocked its takeover of Dutch peer TNT four years ago, potentially allowing the world's largest package delivery company to sue regulators for damages.The European Commission rejected the 5.2 billion euro ($5.5 billion) deal in 2013, saying UPS had

By Nichola Saminather | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE Asian shares rose on Tuesday, diverging from New York markets that slipped on concern about President Donald Trump's ability to focus on economic policies.Oil prices were slightly lower amid fears growing U.S. production will offset OPEC cuts. Futures are pointing to a positive open for Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE and France's CAC 40 .FCHI. MSCI's

GENEVA Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) expects to broaden disciplinary action beyond the two dozen employees the carmaker has already suspended in a diesel emissions cheating scandal, Chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch said on Monday."It is to be expected that there will yet be a whole string of (personnel) consequences," Poetsch told reporters late on Monday on the eve of the Geneva auto show. The automaker has refrained from taking action against employees at the request of U.S. authorities in

By Ernest Scheyder | HOUSTON HOUSTON Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), the world's largest publicly traded oil producer, said on Monday it would invest $20 billion through 2022 to expand its chemical and oil refining plants on the U.S. Gulf Coast.The investments at 11 sites should create 35,000 temporary construction jobs and 12,000 permanent jobs, Chief Executive Darren Woods said in a

SAN DIEGO Airbus (AIR.PA) expects the jetliner industry to book almost 30 percent fewer net orders in 2017, but to maintain a slow increase in deliveries, its sales chief said on Monday.John Leahy, chief operating officer for customers at the world's second-largest jet producer behind Boeing (BA.N), said he expected the industry would book over 1,000 net orders in 2017 compared with around 1,400 in 2016.He did not say how this would translate into orders for Airbus, which has not

By David Lawder | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Trump administration trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Monday the $65 billion U.S. trade deficit with Germany was "one of the most difficult" trade issues, and bilateral discussions were needed to reduce it outside of European Union restrictions.Navarro, the director of the new White House National Trade Council, said at an economic conference in