September 9, 2021 (adds dropped word ‘one’ in fourth para) JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa have named three front-line spinners in their squad for the Twenty20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates and Oman but left out opening batsman Janneman Malan. The side will be led by Temba Bavuma, who is currently injured but […]
Europe’s video gaming stocks drop after new China suspension scare
September 9, 2021 By Danilo Masoni MILAN (Reuters) -Europe’s video game stocks fell on Thursday and U.S. peers looked set to follow after a reported suspension of approvals for new online games in China, the world’s biggest gaming market. People with knowledge of the matter told the South China Morning Post that Beijing had temporarily […]
Blackstone hires executives for fast-growing credit business
September 9, 2021 By Svea Herbst-Bayliss BOSTON (Reuters) – Blackstone Inc said it hired two Wall Street veterans as partners and promoted another executive to work in its Blackstone Credit unit as fresh demand from institutional and retail investors made it the private equity firm’s fastest-growing segment. Carlos Whitaker, a Credit Suisse executive, and Chris […]
Wizz Air in talks over large Airbus jet order -sources
September 9, 2021 PARIS (Reuters) -Hungary’s Wizz Air is in negotiations with European planemaker Airbus over the purchase of at least 100 more narrowbody jets, industry sources said on Thursday. Talks began several months ago and surfaced as Wizz Air emerged as a suitor for rival easyJet and as Europe’s largest budget carrier, Ryanair, remained […]
New York extends post-Brexit gains in euro swaps trading
September 9, 2021 By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) – New York has increased its market share in trading euro interest rate swaps at London’s expense, data group OSTTRA said on Thursday, in the latest sign of how global financial markets are being permanently fragmented by Brexit. Trading in euro rate swaps began leaving London for […]
Scalapay raises $155M at a $700M valuation as buy-now, pay-later services continue to boom
Scalapay, a buy-now, pay-later (BNPL) technology provider that has made significant headway with retailers and consumers in Europe and in categories like fashion, has closed a round of funding that it will be using to fuel its expansion ambitions. The startup has raised $155 million at a $700 million valuation. Tiger Global is leading this […]
Inflationary pressures force Lebanese to make tough choices
September 9, 2021 By Maha El Dahan and Alaa Kanaan BEIRUT (Reuters) – Ibrahim Jaber was laid off when the fast food restaurant where he worked as a chef in Beirut shut down. Unable to find another job, he had to take his daughter out of school to put food on the table at home. […]
Fertility tracking app Flo closes $50M Series B
Flo, a fertility focused period-tracking app, has closed a $50 million Series B funding round which it says values the company at $800M — underlining how much value investors are now attaching to women’s health tech. The 2016-founded startup raised a $1M seed in its first year and has gone on to raise a total […]
Teatis, low-sugar superfood powders developer for diabetics, closes seed round
A serial entrepreneur Hiroshi Takatoh recognized the need for convenient and nutritious food for critically ill consumers after losing his late wife to cancer. Takatoh founded Teatis, a plant-based sugar blocking superfood powder for diabetic consumers, in 2017 in stealth mode and went fully operational in April 2021 by teaming up with a group of […]
Fin names former Twilio exec Evan Cummack as CEO, raises $20M
Work insights platform Fin raised $20 million in Series A funding and brought in Evan Cummack, a former Twilio executive, as its new chief executive officer. The San Francisco-based company captures employee workflow data from across applications and turns it into productivity insights to improve the way enterprise teams work and remain engaged. Fin was […]
CookUnity whips up nationwide expansion following $47M round
Chef-prepared, small-batch meal delivery startup CookUnity is undergoing a major expansion after closing a $47 million Series B round. Insight Partners led the round and was joined by Endeavor Capital and current investors IDCV, Fuel Ventures and Gaingels. The latest funding comes eight months after New York-based CookUnity closed a $15.5 million Series A round […]
Nuula raises $120M to build out a financial services ‘superapp’ aimed at SMBs
A Canadian startup called Nuula that is aiming to build a superapp to provide a range of financial services to small and medium businesses has closed $120 million of funding, money that it will use to fuel the launch of its app and first product, a line of credit for its users. The money is […]
U.S. govt set to release plan to lower prescription drug prices – WSJ
September 9, 2021 (Reuters) – The Biden administration is set to unveil a plan that supports legislation to empower the U.S. federal government to negotiate drug prices in Medicare and pass along the benefits to the private sector, the Wall Street Journal reported https://on.wsj.com/3hbUEQL on Thursday. The COVID-19 outbreak, which has upended the U.S. economy […]
How business travel may never be the same again
September 9, 2021 By Emma Thomasson and Silvia Aloisi BERLIN/MILAN (Reuters) – Sylvia Burbery is delighted that she no longer spends most of her life travelling for work. “I am grateful that the pandemic has forced us to step back and look at ways of working we took for granted,” said the regional president for […]
Taliban interim government agrees to let foreigners leave Afghanistan
September 9, 2021 (Reuters) -Two hundred foreigners in Afghanistan, Americans among them, are set to depart on charter flights from Kabul on Thursday after the new Taliban government agreed to their evacuation, a U.S. official said. The departures will be among the first international flights to take off from Kabul airport since the Islamist militia […]
Pressure grows on Polish govt over media reform bill as senate votes
September 9, 2021 WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s opposition-led upper house of parliament, the Senate, is on Thursday expected to vote against a broadcast reform bill that critics say is aimed at silencing a U.S.-owned anti-government news channel. The reforms would strengthen a ban on firms from outside the European Economic Area controlling Polish broadcasters and […]
Google under new EU antitrust investigation – MLex reporter
September 9, 2021 (Reuters) -Alphabet Inc’s Google is facing a renewed EU antitrust investigation into whether it may have forced device manufacturers to use Google Assistant as the default voice assistant on Android devices, an MLex reporter tweeted https://twitter.com/MrSamWilkin/status/1435900528844750852?s=20 on Thursday. The latest investigation comes amid concerns of potential anti-competitive practices in the race for […]
Russia’s Yandex says it repelled biggest DDoS attack in history
September 9, 2021 MOSCOW (Reuters) – A cyber attack on Russian tech giant Yandex’s servers in August and September was the largest known distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in the history of the internet, the company said on Thursday. The DDoS attack, in which hackers try to flood a network with unusually high volumes of data […]
Investors hit pause as GameStop goes quiet on reorg
September 9, 2021 (Corrects to say “sales”, not “profit”, in paragraph 2) (Reuters) – Video game retailer GameStop Corp tumbled 8% in early trading on Thursday as the company’s silence on its turnaround plan left its army of small-time investors questioning the meteoric rise in its share price this year. Although the company posted a […]
UK regulators tell trade finance firms to step up crime controls
September 9, 2021 By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s financial regulators said on Thursday that trade finance firms must do more to identify potentially suspicious activities by undertaking additional risk assessments. During the past 18 months there have been several high-profile failures of commodity and trade finance firms with significant losses, the Bank of England […]
