Net profit of Wells Fargo & Co, one of the largest US banking groups, jumped 7.3 times year-on-year to $4.742 billion in the first quarter of 2021, according to the bank's financial statements. The group's diluted earnings per share were $1.05 compared to $0.01 a year earlier. The bank's January-March revenues rose 1.9 per cent year-on-year to $18.063 billion. "Our results for the quarter,...

The largest US cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, has gone public. After the listing, its capitalisation exceeded $100bn - more than the value of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq combined. Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, listed directly on the Nasdaq exchange. At the opening of trading, Coinbase shares were valued at $381, while the market capitalisation...

Huawei has said it plans to invest $1bn this year to develop technology for electric vehicles and an autopilot system. The company claims its autopilot is "far better than that of Tesla". Huawei Technologies is investing $1 billion this year in the development of electric vehicles and autopilot technology, Bloomberg writes, citing the company's current chief executive, Eric Xu.  According...

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...