CNN – Business/Consumer

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Private equity firm Blackstone Group is abandoning its $3 billion bid for a controlling stake in Soho China, one of the country’s largest real estate developers. In a regulatory filing Friday, Blackstone said it decided to drop the deal “in light of the lack of sufficient progress” being made among

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN Business There was a slight drizzle when I was getting ready to go for a short drive in Bentley’s new Bacalar. Ordinarily, this would not be a big deal. The rain was hardly enough to warrant an umbrella. Except the Bentley Bacalar has no roof. The Bacalar is not a convertible.

By Hanna Ziady, CNN Business Back in the spring, as the pace of vaccinations increased rapidly and growth predictions improved, businesses were hopeful that by the fall economic activity would largely be back to normal. Well, September has arrived but the return to normal that many expected remains elusive. What’s happening: Developments over the past

By Michelle Toh, CNN Business The United States has lifted an import ban on the world’s largest glove maker after concluding that its products are no longer being produced using forced labor. In an announcement Friday, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency said that it had cleared Top Glove, a Malaysian company, after

By Laura He, CNN Business China is starting to sell off some of the oil it keeps in strategic reserve in a bid to lower prices in the market, a historic first for the world’s biggest importer of oil and its second largest consumer. The State Bureau of Grain and Material Reserves said late Thursday

By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. You can sign up for free right here. “An Authoritarian.” “Rotting bag of oatmeal … tyrant.” “Very frail and very weak.” Those are only a handful of the vile attacks directed at President Biden on Fox News Thursday

By Alexis Benveniste, CNN Business JPMorgan Chase is buying the Infatuation, a restaurant discovery platform that shares reviews and recommendations on where to eat. The acquisition will include the Infatuation’s entire business, including Zagat, which the company purchased in March 2018. The bank didn’t disclose the price of the deal. The news was first reported

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business Walmart will end its quarterly bonuses for US store workers in January after it raises its hourly minimum wage from $11 to $12, eliminating a longstanding perk for workers. Walmart, the largest private employer in the United States, has for decades paid the bonuses to its approximately 1.2 million hourly

By Matt Egan, CNN Business Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been criticized by progressives for going soft on big banks and not doing enough to address the climate crisis. Now, a lifelong Republican is joining that critique. Sheila Bair, one of the few American regulators who sounded the alarm prior to the subprime mortgage

By Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business Amazon is offering to cover four-year college tuition for most of its approximately 750,000 hourly workers in the United States, the latest major employer to offer the perk to attract and retain hourly employees in a tight job market. Starting in January, Amazon for the first time will pay for

By Jordan Valinsky and Diksha Madhok, CNN Business Ford is ending production in India and taking a hit of $2 billion as it retrenches from a market that has been almost impossible for American automakers to break into. In an announcement Thursday, the company said that roughly 4,000 employees will be laid off and manufacturing

By Hanna Ziady, CNN Business Cathie Wood, the CEO of Ark Invest, is reportedly slashing her exposure to China, and switching to stocks that are in Beijing’s good books. The Wall Street superstar revealed Thursday that her fund has significantly reduced its exposure to China amid sweeping regulatory changes that have made the investment environment

By Angela Dewan, International Climate Editor Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison all but admitted Thursday that his country had asked UK negotiators to exclude particular climate commitments from a free trade deal agreed in principle in June. The UK government, which is chairing November’s COP26 international climate talks, as well as Australia’s have come under

By Charles Riley, CNN Business On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia ripped off the stimulus band-aid and confirmed that it would start to scale back its bond-buying program this month despite concerns about the impact of the Delta coronavirus variant on the economy. The European Central Bank followed suit on Thursday, saying that it

By Jordan Valinsky, CNN Business Taco Bell has a plan in place to recycle some of the 8 billion pounds of used sauce packets that go into US landfills every year. The fast food chain is rolling out a nationwide pilot program for customers to send used sauce packets back through the mail. The program,