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Game on, Brussels says
countable” regulator, maintaining the English Channel had never seemed wider for attracting businesses.
“There’s a clear message here, the EU is a more attractive place to start a business than the UK,” Smith declared.
HUW PILL, the Bank of England’s top economist, apologised for suggesting that people should accept they were poorer.
create a hostile environment for businesses in the UK, Cardell told MPs a day after the European Commission approved the merger.
The CMA wanted to “create and support” the best conditions for competition, enabling companies big and small to thrive, she insisted.
REPSOL and Italian energy company Eni could begin importing Venezuelan gas and gas condensates by June.
The news was announced by Pedro Tellechea, president of staterun Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), who confirmed that both companies wanted to increase the volume of their operations inside the Latin American country.
The agreement increases Europe’s supply options in the context of the energy crisis created by the Ukraine war, while bringing investment and royalties to Venezuela’s beleaguered economy.
The deal will allow Repsol and Eni to concentrate on their Perla gas field, a joint project located in the Cardon IV block in the Gulf of Venezuela. Regarded as having ‘enormous potential’, the offshore operation has increased activities reccently, up 30 per cent on 2019.
Apollo backs off
PRIVATE equity firm Apollo abandoned its £1.66 billion (€1.91 billion) takeover of the oil and gas services company, Wood Group.
The Aberdeenbased company said earlier that it would “engage” with Apollo’s final offer of 240p (€2.76) per share, after rejecting four earlier proposals which it said were too low.
Instead the New York firm announced on Monday May 15 that it would not make another offer for the business, two days before the deadline for making a firm bid or turning its back on the deal.
The European regulators said the commitments offered by Microsoft and Activision to maintain competition provided significant benefits for competition and consumers.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s vicechairman Brad Smith referred to the UK’s “unac
“Global innovators will take note that, despite all its rhetoric, the UK is clearly closed for business,” Smith had said following the CMA’s decision to block in April.
Microsoft and Activision are currently setting up legal team to challenge the UK ruling.
Gas from Venezuela
stepped up sanctions against Venezuela.
Washington hopes this will encourage Nicolas Maduro’s government regarded as a dictatorship to allow more political freedom inside the country.
“Economic projects like these benefit both Europe and Venezuela,” said EU’s High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell.
Censured by unions, businesses and the public, Pill’s critics included his own chief, the governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey, who said the economist’s choice of words “was not right.”
“If I had the chance again, I would use somewhat different words to describe the challenges we all face,” Pill said.
“Although we have some difficult messages to bring. I will try to bring them in a way that is perhaps less inflammatory than maybe I managed in the past.”
