America

Marriott International has completed the $17 billion acquisition of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, thus creating the largest hotel group in the world, as the note of the company suggested. Starwood shareholders will receive $ 21 in cash and 0.80 share of Marriott class A common stock for each share of Starwood common stock.

Marriott intends to take the necessary steps to ensure that the Starwood debt is matched by the debt of Marriott International by the end of 2016, in order to maintain the credit rating of investment grade.

Applications for unemployment benefits in the US fell again in the week endend 17 September. The US labor market confirms the solidity, keeping unemployment at the lowest level since 1973.

Claims slide by 8.000 units to 252 000 from 260 thousand the previous week’s unrevised. Analysts’ forecasts were instead for a small increase to 262 thousand units. The streak below 300k estends to 81 consecutive weeks, the longest since 1970.

Yahoo could confirm in the coming days a data breach in the accounts of several hundred million users, as reported by Recode citing unnamed sources. The breach may affect over 200 million Yahoo accounts, including highly sensitive information such as names, passwords, birth dates or other email addresses. The confirmation would follow a Yahoo investigation into claims that surfaced in early August that a hacker with the name "Peace" was trying to sell data, as referred by USA Today.

The Geneva-based SGS Group (Société Générale de Surveillance), world leader in the certification and inspection industry, expands its activities in agriculture in the United States. It acquired McCrea’s license and assets, an agency approved by the US Department of Agriculture. This was reported by Reuters.

General Motors and Unifor, the Canadian trade union of workers in the sector, reached an agreement that averted a strike that would lead to blocking of some of the Canadian facilities of the company.

The deal, which will be subject to a ratification vote on Sunday, provides that Oshawa’s assembly plant will remain open, that it’s focused on sedans that come out of production in 2019 and GM is committed to investing "hundreds of millions of dollars" in a restructuring program to allow the assembly also of other product categories.

Syngenta, agrochemical group Basel-based, has to pay $ 1.2 million to settle a dispute with EPA, the US government agency for environmental protection, relating to the sale of pesticides declared incorrectly.

Consumer prices rose 0.2% in August, after the data unchanged in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Analysts’ forecasts expected up 0.1%. The growth was 1.1% year-on-year, above expectations for a gain of 1.0% and after having risen 0.8% in July.

The so-called core CPI, which is the consumer price index adjusted for the more volatile components such as food and energy, showed an increase of 0.3%, after + 0.1% the previous month. The annual figure is however at 2.3%, up from + 2.2% in July.

FCA Us started a voluntary recall of more than 1.9 million vehicles worldwide to fix an air-bag defect linked to three deaths and five injuries. In particular, the US subsidiary of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has set itself the goal of solving a defect that could prevent the proper functioning of airbags and pre-tensioner seat belts in an accident. The defect concerns vehicles equipped with a special control module and crash sensors with a specific design.