Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition 10/2/2017

Asia ● In a royal decree, Saudi Arabia said its long-standing ban on women driving would end next June. ● Japanese banks pledged to create a digital currency pegged to the yen in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, with the goal of smoothing digital transactions. ● Alibaba Group spent $807m on a majority stake in Cainiao, the logistics company that handles much of its shipments. It promised to spend $15 million more to improve its warehouse and delivery systems. ● Unilever agreed to buy Carver, a Korean cosmetics company, for $2.7b Iraqi Kurds voted overwhelmingly to secede from Iraq. Turnout among eligible voters was greater than 72 percent. Americas ● The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress unveiled a wide-ranging plan to overhaul the U.S. tax code. It calls for lowering the top corporate rate…

“This is, without a doubt, the biggest catastrophe in modern history for Puerto Rico,” Governor Ricardo Rosselló said after Hurricane Maria pummeled the U.S. territory with floodwaters and 155 mph winds. He declared that his priorities were “not a fiscal consideration. It’s restoring people’s security and restoring normalcy.” Normalcy, however, is something Puerto Rico hasn’t experienced in a while. That’s because the government is essentially bankrupt. Years of runaway borrowing to plug budget shortfalls, a decade-long recession, and the exodus of residents seeking work in the mainland U.S. pushed the commonwealth in May to seek creditor relief from nearly $74 billion of debt, the nation’s biggest municipal bankruptcy. The island’s budget and spending now have to be approved by an oversight board appointed by the federal government. That board says that…

In May, scores of people on the front lines of America’s opioid crisis packed a National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers conference in Austin to listen to a Google contractor named Josh Weum. Google didn’t send Weum there to talk about helping people get clean. He was explaining how to use Google to cash in on America’s $35 billion addiction treatment market. Ostensibly, Weum was part of a panel discussion on ethics. But his job was to promote Google’s giant digital marketing business, and for 14 minutes he threw around terms like “desktop immersion,” “conquesting,” “multiscreen dynamic,” and “PPC” (pay per click). At the heart of Weum’s pitch was the product that’s made Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc., the second-most valuable company in the world: the AdWords keyword auction system. Through this…

Receiving bad financial news is never easy. But getting two doses in the same day is the ultimate insult. Just ask Canadian transportation equipment maker Bombardier Inc. After months of secret talks about combining its rail-equipment business with that of rival Siemens AG, the German company announced on Sept. 26 that its rail operations will merge instead with France’s Alstom SA. That would produce a pan-European powerhouse in rail and subway gear to challenge the industry-leading Chinese—and leave Bombardier at the altar. Later that day, the Canadian company was battered again when the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a preliminary ruling in favor of Boeing Co. The U.S. company had filed a trade complaint claiming Bombardier had received $2.5 billion in Canadian aid, including equity investments, to produce its C Series…

“Film finance is kind of like whack-a-mole. Someone goes away, and someone else pops up” It was supposed to be one of the biggest deals yet in the budding relationship between Hollywood and China. In January, Shanghai Film Group and Beijing’s Huahua Media agreed to pay a combined $1 billion to help finance Paramount Pictures Corp.’s full slate of movies for the next three years. The agreement would ensure that potential blockbusters such as XXX: The Return of Xander Cage and Transformers: The Last Knight would have the funds to reach thousands of screens around the world—while giving the studio an edge in distributing and marketing movies in China. Less than six months later the new partners missed making a scheduled payment to the studio. In late 2016 the Chinese government started…

Frank Marino sits in the Steadfast, a repurposed U.S. Coast Guard boat bobbing in Boston Harbor one morning in late August. He points the boat straight at a buoy several hundred yards away, while his colleague Mohamed Saad Ibn Seddik uses a laptop to set the vehicle on a collision course. Then Ibn Seddik flips the boat into autonomous driving mode. They sit back as the vessel moves at a modest speed of 6 knots, smoothly veers right to avoid the buoy, then returns to its preset path. Ibn Seddik taps in directions to get the boat moving back the other way at twice the speed. This time the vessel kicks up a wake, and the turn feels sharper, even as it gives the buoy the same wide berth. In a…