Reuters News
(Reuters) – At restaurants, at movies and at the office, checking Facebook has become a regular habit for many of the Internet social network’s more than 800 million users. Now that habit has reached a new frontier: the automobile. Mercedes-Benz USA is bringing Facebook to its cars, with a special version of the service that […]
(Reuters) - Blackstone Group will conclude fundraising for its latest buyout fund in January, raising just over $16 billion, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in a 4-year process challenged by the global financial crisis. The fund is the largest in the market to complete its fundraising process and the sixth biggest private equity fund ever raised, according to data firm Preqin. Private equity firms raised $263 billion in 2011, slightly less than in 2010, according to Preqin, and a far cry from the height of the buyouts boom leading up to 2007, when...
(Reuters) – China remained the world’s biggest IPO market in 2011, even as total funds raised slumped from the previous year due to global economic uncertainty, underscoring the shift of financial power from the west to the east. Chinese firms raised a combined 286.1 billion yuan ($45.5 billion) through initial public offerings in Shanghai and […]
(Reuters) – Groupon Inc’s main business grew in November as the largest daily deal company extended its lead over rival LivingSocial, according to estimates released on Wednesday. Groupon’s gross billings totaled $154 million in November, up 6 percent from the $145 million it collected in October, Yipit estimated. LivingSocial’s gross billings declined 5 percent to […]
(Reuters) – Groupon Inc shares fell more than 7 percent on Tuesday on concern the company may not have as many daily deals to offer as some merchants pull back. Susquehanna Financial Group and daily deal industry tracking firm Yipit surveyed almost 400 merchants recently about their experiences running daily deals with Groupon, LivingSocial and […]
(Reuters) – French oil group Total SA is ploughing $2.3 billion into the development of U.S. shale gas reserves in Ohio in the latest example of global energy companies piling into new energy sources made economic by the high price of crude. In a deal with Chesapeake Energy Corp, which the U.S. group announced in […]
(Reuters) – China’s Alibaba Group has hired Washington lobbying firm Duberstein Group Inc as it eyes a possible deal with Internet giant Yahoo Inc. Japan’s Softbank Corp is also listed as an Alibaba affiliate in the lobbying firm’s disclosure, according to the filing. The lobbying registration lists the law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, […]
(Reuters) – Asia’s private equity firms face a shrinking pool of bank loans as European lenders pull back from the region, crimping both investments and re-financings for buyout-backed companies and adding to the list of challenges the industry will meet in 2012. In addition to tighter financing, Asia’s private equity industry faces an IPO market […]
(Reuters) - Google Inc and TransCanada Corp announced deals to buy solar power projects on Tuesday, just days after billionaire Warren Buffett made his second major purchase in the sector. Prices for solar panels have fallen more than 40 percent this year, pushing the cost to install the renewable energy systems to their cheapest levels ever. But solar panel makers have struggled as the price decline eroded profit margins for the nascent industry, driving share prices across the sector sharply lower.
AT&T has abandoned its $39 billion bid to buy T-Mobile, Deutsche Telekom's U.S. wireless unit, after facing intense regulatory opposition. AT&T will have to find another way to address its shortage of wireless airwaves while Deutsche Telekom has to go back to the drawing board on what to do with T-Mobile USA, the struggling U.S. business it had desperately wanted to shed, Reuters wrote.