UK Prime Minister Theresa May had called Thursday’s snap elections to strengthen her hand in Brussels, but the loss of her Conservative majority has plunged the Brexit process into disarray just over a week before talks are scheduled to begin.
The Tories won fewer than 320 seats, short of the 326 needed for a majority in Britain’s 650-member House of Commons. Labour, the main opposition party, gained more than 30 seats to top 260.
Swiss agriculture company Syngenta, which is in deal to be bought by China National Chemical Corp., known as ChemChina, announced Friday that it has entered into an agreement to sell global Sugar Beet seeds business to DLF Seeds. Financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
The transaction is subject to customary approval requirements and expected to close by the end of the third quarter of 2017. DLF Seeds is a seed company dealing in forage and turf seeds, and other crops.
The Swiss banking group UBS has agreed to sell its domestic wealth management activities in the Netherlands to Van Lanschot Kempen, an arm of a Euronext Amsterdam-listed banking group that dates back to the 1700s.
Van Lanschot Kempen will pay an initial acquisition price of €28m, a joint statement reported, although the final price “may be higher or lower depending on the [asset management amount] that will actually transfer to Van Lanschot Kempen” once the deal completes.
Credit Suisse Group investors agreed to buy 99.2 percent of the shares on sale in a rights offering, providing 4.1 billion Swiss francs ($4.3 billion) for Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam’s turnaround plan.
Spain’s Banco Santander said Wednesday it will take over struggling Banco Popular Espanol for the symbolic price of 1 euro, creating the country’s largest bank by lending and deposits, according to a press statement.
"This means that Banco Popular will operate under normal business conditions as a solvent and liquid member of the Santander Group with immediate effect," the board said.
Apple unveiled a host of new products, updates and software features at its annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) on Monday, and one of them could potentially save lives. The upcoming iOS will include a feature called ‘Do Not Disturb While Driving" that will make it easier to avoid texting while driving. By all indications, it’s rather simple tool from a technological standpoint – but if it works as advertised, iPhone’s ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature could prevent car accidents and traffic fatalities, which is more than enough to make it a worthwhile update.
In its latest effort to compete with online giant Amazon, Wal-Mart is testing a delivery service using its own store employees, who will deliver packages ordered online while driving home from their regular work shifts.
The “associate delivery” program would use Wal-Mart’s 4,700 U.S. stores and roughly 1.2 million employees to speed delivery and cut costs, the company said Thursday. The announcement came just a day before the company’s annual meeting.
Billionaire tycoon George Soros has warned the EU it is facing an ‘existential crisis’ and that Brexit talks could last five years. If, during the divorce negotiations, the EU manages to successfully reform itself and attract wider support from its citizens, the U.K. will want to keep its European membership, Soros told an audience in Brussels.
"The divorce will be a long process taking as long as five years. Five years are a very long time in politics, especially in revolutionary times like the present," Soros noted.
