Business News Roundup, May 12
[...] it recently suffered a setback when a local driver was sentenced and fined by Sweden’s Svea Court of Appeal for illegal taxi trade and breaching related local laws.
In 2015, Uber closed the same service in France after two senior managers were detained by French police after violent protests by local taxi drivers.
Shares of Staples Inc. and Office Depot Inc. plummeted the most ever after a federal judge blocked the combination of the two largest office suppliers, saying it would create an unrivaled giant.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington thwarted the $6.3 billion deal late Tuesday, a victory for the Federal Trade Commission, which argued that uniting the national suppliers of pens and printer paper would harm buyers.
The FTC met its “burden of showing that there is a reasonable probability that the proposed merger will substantially impair competition in the sale and distribution of consumable office supplies to large business-to-business customers,” Sullivan wrote in a three-page order.
The declines were both the biggest on record for chains, which both held initial public offerings in 1989.
European antitrust officials Wednesday rebuffed renewed efforts to consolidate the region’s telecommunications sector, blocking a proposed $14.5 billion deal between two major British carriers.
Under the proposed deal, Hutchison Whampoa, one of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s flagship companies, which owns the British operator Three, had sought to acquire O2, a rival in Britain owned by Spanish telecom giant Telefónica.
“We want the mobile telecoms sector to be competitive, so that consumers can enjoy innovative mobile services at fair prices and high network quality,” Vestager said in a statement Wednesday.
Vestager’s tough stance comes as the Danish politician has taken a muscular approach to defending Europe’s competition rules, including charging Google for abusing its market position with some of its online search products and with its use of Android, its smartphone operating system.
Steven Crown, vice president and deputy general of Microsoft, said technology companies, states and nongovernmental organizations must work together to “address terrorist use of the Internet, including creation and use of counter-narratives,” in a manner that respects privacy and free speech.
The Security Council is seeking to develop a comprehensive international framework by April 30, 2017, to counter the use of narratives by the Islamic State group, al Qaeda and other extremist groups who use the internet as a recruiting tool.
A Swiss town that is billing itself as a hub for the digital currency industry will accept bitcoin for some payments starting this summer, in what proponents call a worldwide first by a government body and a sign that “crypto finance” is growing in legitimacy.
The town council in northern Zug last week approved plans to accept payments of up to about $200 for municipal registration fees starting July 1, in what Mayor Dolfi Mueller called Wednesday an “experiment” aimed at making the digitally minded town a pioneer in finance.
Niklas Nikolajsen, CEO of financial services company Bitcoin Suisse AG in Zug, said the city’s decision is “the first example of a state entity that accepts bitcoin.”