Headlines

An Ontario judge has decided which law firm will represent employees in the Hudson's Bay creditor protection case, the Canadian Press reported. An endorsement filed by judge Peter Osborne on Monday named Ursel Phillips Fellows Hopkinson LLP as representative counsel to the faltering department store's more than 9,000 employees and 3,000 retirees.

Volvo Cars' battery company Novo Energy said on Monday it will cut its workforce by 50% to reduce costs after evaluating its business to take account of the bankruptcy of Sweden's Northvolt, which originally co-owned the venture, Reuters reported. "Despite our best efforts to secure our business and an extensive ongoing search for a suitable new technology partner, the current economic challenges and market conditions have made it impossible to maintain our operations at the current scale," Novo Energy CEO Adrian Clarke said in a statement.

The European Union plans to hit about €100 billion ($113 billion) in US goods with additional tariffs in the event ongoing trade talks fail to yield a satisfactory result for the bloc, Bloomberg News reported. The proposed retaliatory measures will be shared with member states as early as Wednesday and consultations will last for a month before the list is finalized. The list could change in that time.

Britain and India agreed to a trade deal on Tuesday, strengthening economic ties between two of the world’s largest economies amid President Trump’s upheaval of the global trade system, the New York Times reported. The deal, which the British government said would increase bilateral trade by 25.5 billion pounds ($34 billion), comes three years after the negotiations began. Intense talks to finalize the outstanding issues took place last week between Jonathan Reynolds, Britain’s business and trade secretary, and Piyush Goyal, India’s commerce minister.

India has proposed zero tariffs on steel, auto components and pharmaceuticals on a reciprocal basis up to a certain quantity of imports in its trade negotiations with the U.S., Bloomberg News reported. Beyond this threshold, imported industrial goods would attract the regular level of duties. The offer was made by Indian trade officials visiting Washington late last month to expedite negotiations on a bilateral trade deal expected by fall this year. Read more.

France’s industrial sector continued to book rising output, capping a positive start to a year that could nevertheless darken if U.S. President Trump’s trade tariffs bite into demand, the Wall Street Journal reported. Production from French factories and other industry increased 0.2% in March from a month earlier, in line with economists’ estimates, figures from the country’s statistics agency showed Tuesday. Following a 1% rise a month earlier, March’s increase helps reverse a monthslong streak of decline in the sector’s output.

A manufacturer of capsules and tablets for the pharmaceuticals industry is scouting Asia for new partners. A steel component maker, with a client base in the United States stretching back 35 years, is telling customers to expect to pay higher prices, Reuters reported. Another company, that produces mascot costumes for sporting or school events, is lowering its prices so as not to lose American customers.

Not long ago, anyone could comb through a wide range of official data from China. Then it started to disappear, the Wall Street Journal reported. Land sales measures, foreign investment data and unemployment indicators have gone dark in recent years. Data on cremations and a business confidence index have been cut off. Even official soy sauce production reports are gone. In all, Chinese officials have stopped publishing hundreds of data points once used by researchers and investors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

It was always going to be a hard year for Bangladesh. Last summer, amid an economic collapse, protesters toppled a tyrant and pushed the country to the brink of chaos, the New York Times reported. Then a month ago, as a new government was still working to steady Bangladesh’s economy, came the devastating news that the United States was placing a new 37 percent charge on the country’s goods. Bangladesh relies on revenue from its exports to buy fuel, food and other essentials.

U.S. prosecutors said on Monday that UBS, which rescued Credit Suisse from the brink of collapse two years ago, would pay $510 million in fines for the role Credit Suisse played in helping clients evade taxes, the New York Times reported. Credit Suisse, among other moves, helped clients hide more than $4 billion from the Internal Revenue Service in at least 475 accounts, prosecutors said. Credit Suisse’s Singapore office was singled out for holding undeclared accounts for people who owed taxes. The bank pleaded guilty to, in the words of prosecutors, enabling “U.S.