Qatari banker Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani has made a third and final offer to buy Manchester United, sources told AFP on Friday.. Ratcliffe is also reported to have made another offer for United ahead of Friday's deadline for the third round of bidding.
Credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded France's debt worthiness a notch to "AA-" from "AA" on Friday, claiming the country's "fiscal metrics are weaker than peers "Public finances, and in particular the high level of government debt, are a rating weakness," Fitch said in a commentary on its rating action which said the country's outlook was stable.
The US Federal Reserve called for greater banking oversight while admitting to its own failures in a widely-anticipated report published Friday into the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last month.. Another US regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, will publish a report later on Friday into the collapse of Signature Bank, the other high-profile regional bank to collapse last month.
US oil giants ExxonMobil and Chevron reported another quarter of heady profits Friday as both companies continued to direct large cash payments to shareholders.. Strong refining results offset the effect of lower crude prices in the first quarter compared with the year-ago period, lifting profits and enabling ExxonMobil to return $8.1 billion to shareholders and Chevron $6.6 billion in dividends and share repurchases.
British music retailer HMV said Friday it will return to the site of its once-flagship store on London's Oxford Street after a turnaround in fortunes for the emblematic company.. HMV will be "back by popular demand on Oxford Street", it said in a statement Friday and after the group returned to profit last year.
One hundred metres underground inside a pit in northern China, miners extract lumps of coal with the flick of a finger on a smartphone, as the country tries to drag the traditionally dangerous and dirty work into the digital era.. The management says the underground team has been cut 40 percent -- though not the overall workforce -- and only essential maintenance miners descend into the pit.
ExxonMobil reported Friday that first-quarter profits more than doubled to $11.4 billion, as the US oil giant returned over $8 billion to shareholders during the period.. The streak of massive profits by ExxonMobil and other US oil giants has sparked criticism from President Joe Biden and others, who have urged petroleum producers to boost volumes rather in a period of elevated inflation rather than spend extra cash on dividends and share repurchases.
Germany teetered on the brink of recession Friday after official data showed the economy stagnated in the first quarter despite expectations for a slight rebound, as the energy crisis weighed on Europe's top economy.. While the economy appears to have avoided the worst, the first quarter reading was below expectations from analysts surveyed by financial data firm FactSet for an expansion of 0.2 percent.
The eurozone economy lumbered forward in the first quarter, official data showed Friday, expanding just 0.1 percent over the previous quarter as high inflation and interest rates weigh on activity.. The weak-but-positive figure for the eurozone mirrored the reading for the last quarter of 2022, which was also 0.1 percent growth, confirming it had so-far escaped recession but that high inflation was still a dampener.
Mercedes-Benz said Friday its net profits rose by 12 percent in the first quarter to 4.0 billion euros, buoyed by demand for its vans and priciest premium cars.. "Our focus on top-end cars and premium vans has made Mercedes-Benz more weatherproof, allowing us to accelerate our digital and electric transformation –- even in a period of economic uncertainty," said Harald Wilhelm, chief financial officer of the group.
