The yield on America’s ten-year Treasury bond（十年期国债） passed 3% for the first time since early 2014. Stockmarkets frowned, as investors worried that a climbing yield on the benchmark bond（基准债券） would lead to higher borrowing costs（借贷成本）. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, when central banks hoovered up（收购） trillions of dollars-worth of government bonds, the ten-year yield（十年期收益） fell to historic lows（历史低点）. It has risen steadily this year in part because the Federal Reserve is continuing along its path of tightening monetary policy.

A muddle for Murdoch

Comcast formally submitted a £22bn ($31bn) bid for Sky, Britain’s premier subscription-TV broadcaster. That prompted Sky to withdraw its recommendation to accept an offer from 21st Century Fox, which owns 39% of Sky and wants to buy the remaining 61% in order to sell the lot to Disney, along with Fox’s other entertainment assets.

Vincent Bolloré, one of the richest businessmen in France, was placed under formal investigation in a corruption probe（贪污案调查）. A former subsidiary of his Bolloré Group is alleged to have supported the election campaigns of politicians in Guinea and Togo in 2009 and 2010 in return for port contracts. Mr Bolloré and his firm deny wrongdoing.

After rejecting four previous offers, Shire, which specialises in drugs for rare diseases（疑难杂症） and is listed in London, said it was willing to recommend to shareholders a preliminary takeover bid（初步的兼并要约） from Takeda, a smaller Japanese rival. The deal is worth £46bn ($64bn). If completed the combined company would rank alongside industry giants such as Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline.

Christian Sewing used his first quarterly earnings report since becoming chief executive at Deutsche Bank to lay out sweeping changes（彻底改革） to its investment-banking and trading divisions. Revenue from trading plunged by 17% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, a stark contrast with Deutsche’s American rivals, which posted strong growth in trading income. Deutsche now plans to shrink its business in America, a move that activist investors had been pushing for, in order to focus on commercial clients（商业客户） in Europe. The German bank’s overall net income fell by 79% to €120m ($147m).

Barclays said that Britain’s financial-conduct regulators had finished their investigation into Jes Staley, the bank’s chief executive, over his attempt to uncover the identity of a whistleblower, and that they have proposed he pay a financial penalty（经济惩罚）, but “are not alleging…that he lacks fitness and propriety” to continue in his job.

The Irish government reached an agreement with Apple over repaying the €13bn ($16bn) in back taxes（补缴税款） that the European Union’s competition regulator has decided are owed to Ireland. The government and Apple are both appealing against the regulator’s ruling from 2016, which found that Ireland’s low-tax arrangements with the tech company constituted illegal state aid. Until the appeals process is exhausted, Apple will pay the €13bn into an escrow account（托管账户）.

Soaring revenues from advertising pushed Facebook’s net profit in the first quarter up by 63% year on year, to $5bn. The number of monthly active users grew sharply to 2.2bn in the three-month period (the Cambridge Analytica scandal emerged at the tail end of the quarter). Alphabet, Google’s parent company, saw its net profit increase by 73% to $9.4bn.

Planting a flag

Meanwhile, YouTube, which is owned by Google, published its first data on the videos it removes from its website. Nearly 8.3m videos were taken down in the last three months of 2017 for violating YouTube’s guidelines; four-fifths of them had been identified by machine-learning algorithms. Around 30m people objected to videos; 1.5m were taken down because of human complaints. Of those that were flagged by people, sexual content caused the most concern, accounting for 30% of all videos reported.

Twitter reported net income of $61m for the first three months of the year, its second consecutive quarterly profit following years of losses. The social network now has 336m monthly active users. Its profile has been lifted by one very active user, Donald Trump, who has posted 37,400 tweets (and counting) since signing up in March 2009.

Baby, you can’t drive my car

Compelled to make its deliveries ever more convenient, Amazon demonstrated a service that allows couriers（快递员） to leave packages in customers’ cars, which can be unlocked with a wireless connection. The service is available for certain types of vehicles with the required technology and certain types of drivers with the required level of trust.

来源：经济学人（2018.04.26）