The German Federal Antitrust Authority has announced the launch of two investigations into Google. The agency is probing the company's possible abuse of its dominant position in several related markets as well as its terms of service for user data. The investigations include Google's German and Irish divisions, as well as its parent corporation Alphabet. The agency said that the first...

US energy companies Cabot Oil & Gas and Cimarex Energy, which specialise in shale oil and gas production, announced a merger. It is a "merger of equals". Cimarex shareholders will receive four Cabot shares for each of their shares, so they will hold 50.5% of the combined company and Cabot shareholders will hold 49.5%. The market capitalisation of the combined company, based on the share price...

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has given final approval for the merger of UK telecoms operators Virgin Media and O2. The merger was announced a year ago by their parent companies, the Anglo-American Liberty Global and the Spanish Telefonica. The deal was negotiated over five months and will result in the creation of the UK's largest integrated telecommunications company providing...

The European Commission has fined financial institutions UBS, UniCredit and Nomura a total of €371m for collusion in the European primary and secondary government bond markets. The EU authorities found that seven investment banks violated European law. In addition to those listed above, Bank of America, Natixis, RBS (now NatWest) and WestLB (now Portigon) were also involved in the collusion....

International automotive alliance Stellantis (comprising Italian-American Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and French PSA Peugeot Citroen Group) and one of the world's largest electronics component manufacturers, Taiwanese Foxconn, announced a strategic partnership. Under the Mobile Drive project, Foxconn will supply Stellantis with the electronics and software that the alliance uses to manufacture...

Munich prosecutors have suspected that a fintech start-up from Lithuania was involved in the theft of €100m of German payment service Wirecard. Jan Marsalek, Wirecard's absconding chief financial officer, received more than a third of the missing money, according to investigators. Munich prosecutors are investigating a possible link between Lithuanian fintech company Finolita and the theft of...

Irish airline Ryanair, Europe's largest low-cost carrier, ended the financial year with a net loss of €815 million, its worst result in its 35-year history, the company said in a report. The COVID-19 pandemic and border closures for most of 2020 made the airline's passenger traffic fall from 149 million to 27.5 million and aircraft utilisation plummet from 95% to 71%.  "A partial recovery...

From 2006 to date, Huawei has struck 70 deals in dozens of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to build cloud infrastructure and e-government systems. This is the data from a report by Washington-based think tank CSIS, as seen by the Financial Times. CSIS says the data shows that, despite US attempts to dissuade governments from doing business with the Chinese company, Huawei is actively...

Chinese online retailer Alibaba posted a net loss of 7.7 billion yuan ($1.2 billion) in the fourth quarter ended at the end of March, compared with a net profit of 7.1 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) a year earlier. It is the corporation's first quarterly loss since its IPO in 2014. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had forecast a profit of ¥6.95 billion. Alibaba's loss is linked to a record $2.8 billion...