Alibaba fully accepts the punishment handed down by China's market regulator for unfair competition, the company said in a statement. Earlier, China's State General Administration for Market Control and Regulation fined Alibaba 18.23 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) for antitrust violations, the largest fine in the country's history. The previous record fine of $975 million was paid in 2015 by...

The average annual pay received by CEOs of the largest publicly traded corporations in the US rose 7% last year to $13.7m. These are the calculations of The Wall Street Journal, which analyzed the earnings of CEOs at more than 300 of the largest U.S. publicly traded companies. CEOs pay rose in 206 of 322 companies, it said. The figures increased in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the...

German carmaker Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) sold around 637,000 vehicles in the first quarter of 2021, up by a third from a year ago, the company said in a statement. "BMW Group delivered 636,606 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles (+33.5%) to customers in the first three months of the year and achieved a new first quarter sales record," the statement said. It was noted that the company...

The Dutch investment fund Prosus, the largest shareholder in Chinese internet corporation Tencent, announced sale of shares in the company for a total of $14.7 billion. Prosus sold 192 million shares of Tencent, which corresponds to 2% of all shares of the company. This reduced the investment fund's stake from 30.9% to 28.9%, but it remains Tencent's largest shareholder. The entire stake held by...

Audio conferencing service Clubhouse is negotiating an investment round that could value the app at about $4 billion, sources told Bloomberg. If the deal goes through, the company's valuation would quadruple compared to January. This reflects investors' "astronomical" expectations of the social network, the agency said. It is not yet clear how much money Clubhouse expects to raise and which...

The Dutch government has agreed to reduce its stake in Air France-KLM in line with a deal between the company and the French government, according to a letter from Acting Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra to parliament. In his letter, Hoekstra said that the Dutch government had agreed to reduce its stake in AF-KLM from 14% to 9.3%. According to the minister, the Netherlands will nevertheless...

The US Supreme Court has ruled that Google did not infringe the copyright of another US company, Oracle. This decision ends a long-running legal battle between Google and Oracle over this issue. Oracle sued Oracle back in 2010 charging that Google infringed its copyrights by using Java programming language in Android operating system. The lawsuit was filed shortly after Oracle bought Java...

Pinterest is in talks to buy VSCO photo app, The New York Times has learned. The service, popular with zoomers, allows editing and sharing photos, with no likes, comments or ads. Pinterest is in talks to buy Visual Supply Company, developer of photo app VSCO. The New York Times reports this, citing two sources. According to them, the companies have not yet agreed on terms, and the amount of the...

One of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms, US-based Coinbase Global, has announced a direct listing date on Nasdaq. The crypto exchange will be traded on the stock market from 14 April. U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase Global called the date of a direct listing of its shares on Nasdaq - it will begin on April 14. The Wall Street Journal reported this, citing the company and the...