Fixed income

Italy’s biggest bank, UniCredit, announced plans on Tuesday to slash 14,000 jobs and raise billions of euros in fresh capital as fears of a banking and political crisis grip the country.
The bank, one of the worst performers in European bank stress tests, confirmed it would need to seek 13 billion euros ($13.8 bn) in fresh capital from investors despite political instability in Italy and the nation’s third-largest bank scrambling to avoid a government-led rescue.

The bank plans to use the record rights issue to help remove almost €18bn of bad debt from its balance sheet and boost profitability.
UniCredit also plans to close about a quarter of its 3,800 branches.

The japanese beer group Asahi said Tuesday it has agreed to acquire beer brands SABMiller Plc’s eastern European assets including Pilsner Urquell from Anheuser-Busch InBev NV for 7.3 billion euros ($7.8 billion),

The deal gives bigger international heft to Asahi, which is one of the top beer makers in its home market of Japan, but only a small player globally. Asahi said it planned to acquire brands in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania.

AB InBev said it had made commitments to the European Commission to sell the CEE Business under the business combination with SABMiller.

EU countries have approved the European Commission’s proposal for fair-use limits on ‘roam like home’, the EC announced. The council of EU representatives, Cocom approved the rules at a meeting 12 December.
However, to avoid knock-on effects on domestic prices given big discrepancies across the bloc in prices and consumption patterns, the EU had to define "fair use" rules to ensure consumers did not abuse the end of roaming by buying cheap SIM cards in one EU country and using them permanently elsewhere.

This means the Commission can confirm the details ahead of its deadline of 15 December, and mobile operators will have six months to implement the changes, by the end of all roaming surcharges in June 2017.

Google and the Cuban government have struck a deal giving Cubans faster access to the Internet giant’s content, two people familiar with the agreement said on Friday, as AP reported today.

Google is installing multiple servers in Cuba that will host much of the company’s most popular content, the person said on condition of anonymity because the deal had not yet been made public. The agreement was being announced by Google chairman Eric Schmidt Monday morning in Havana.

The European Union has given Microsoft the green light over its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn, CNBC reports. As expected, the EU has put some conditions in the deal. As expected, the EU has put some conditions in the deal.

The European Commission granted its approval on the condition that Microsoft allows rival professional networking sites to integrate its Office applications and cloud-computing services for the next five years. PC makers in the EU will also have the option of not installing LinkedIn’s app, Microsoft said.

Credit Suisse announced on Wedsneday more than CHF1 billion ($991 million) in extra cost cuts, as Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam looks to compensate for challenging conditions which have hampered his restructuring of the lender as Reuters report.

In a statement ahead of its investor day, the bank lowered its operating cost base target for 2018 to below 17 billion francs from below 18 billion francs. It also increased planned net cost savings target to greater than 4.2 billion francs by end-2018 from 3.2 billion.

Netflix yesterday briefly became the number one top-grossing iOS app in the U.S. for the first time, holding at bay the likes of Spotify and Candy Crush Saga for most of Monday.

The app also occupied the coveted top spot on iPhone in India, Mexico, and Colombia yesterday, as noted by app tracking company SensorTower, which offered a timeline leading up to the achievement in a blog post.

The accomplishment comes approximately one year after Netflix introduced the ability for users to pay the monthly subscription fee as an in-app purchase. Between then and today, Netflix has grown its weekly net revenue from under $50,000 to nearly $2.9 million, its report says.

Amazon unveiled technology that will let shoppers grab groceries without having to scan and pay for them, eliminating the checkout line.
The company is testing the new system at what it’s calling an Amazon Go store in Seattle, which will open to the public early next year. Customers will be able to scan their phones at the entrance using a new Amazon Go mobile app. Then the technology will track what items they pick up or even return to the shelves and add them to a virtual shopping cart in real time, according a video Amazon posted on YouTube.