Month: November 2019

NEW DELHI/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian telecom stocks rose on Friday amid hopes that the government would step in to help the ailing sector, a day after two top mobile carriers warned their ability to operate and make profits would depend on relief from the country. The Supreme Court last month upheld a demand by the telecoms ministry that wireless carriers pay 920 billion rupees ($12.89 billion) in overdue levies and interest within months. As two of the country’s top three carriers, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel will have to pay a bulk of that money. …read more […]

Britain’s opposition Labour Party’s plans to nationalise parts of telecoms provider BT’s network and provide free full fibre broadband may cost more than 100 billion pounds ($127 billion), BT chief executive said. “These are very, very ambitious ideas and the Conservative Party have their own ambitious idea for full fibre for everyone by 2025 and how we do it is not straight forward,” Chief Executive Philip Jansen told the BBC. …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here.The U.S. is following the European Union in opening antitrust investigations against Norwegian salmon farmers suspected of collusion, including the world’s top producer Mowi ASA.Mowi, SalMar ASA and Grieg Seafood ASA, three of the Nordic country’s biggest producers, said in separate statements on Thursday that they had either received or would get a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and that investigations would be opened.The development in the U.S. follows raids by the European Commission in February in member …read more […]

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday rejected any suggestion of bias in a Pentagon decision to award Microsoft Corp an up to $10 billion cloud computing contract, after Amazon.com Inc announced plans to challenge it. “I am confident it was conducted freely and fairly, without any type of outside influence,” Esper told a news conference in Seoul. Amazon says that politics got in the way of a fair contracting process. …read more […]

Qantas Airways Ltd may not place an order for planes capable of non-stop London-Sydney flights until early next year, the airline’s chief executive said on Friday after a 19 hour, 19 minute test flight landed in Australia’s biggest city. Alan Joyce said he saw a “double sunrise” as a passenger aboard the second of three research flights being conducted to help the Australian airline decide on whether to order planes for what would be the world’s longest commercial route. …read more […]

Bharti Airtel Ltd on Thursday posted a consolidated net loss of 230.45 billion rupees ($3.23 billion) in the second quarter of its financial year as it made provisions for dues owed to the government. Bharti said it made a provision of 284.50 billion rupees, more than 92% of the overall charge for exceptional items, after the Supreme Court last month upheld a demand by the telecoms department that wireless carriers pay 920 billion rupees ($12.97 billion) in overdue levies and interest. “We continue to engage with the government and are evaluating various options available to us,” Gopal …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — Saipem SpA is considering a combination with rival Subsea 7 SA to create a larger European oil services provider, people with knowledge of the matter said.The Italian company is pursuing a potential deal with Norway’s Subsea 7 as it seeks to bulk up and weather an industry downturn, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Shares of Subsea 7 have risen 15% in Oslo trading this year, giving the company a market value of about $3.2 billion.Saipem, whose biggest shareholder is Italian energy giant Eni SpA, is valued at about …read more […]