Business

On any given weekend night in North Hollywood, a group of dancers in outlandish costumes hold signs urging customers to stay away from the Star Garden Topless bar. More than a dozen of the club's dancers say they've been locked out for four-plus months because they petitioned the owners to reinstate two of their fired colleagues, improve security and safety measures, and recognize their right to form a worker union. In an environment where more American workers are leveraging their own power, these strippers have tried unsuccessfully to unionize before. That is to a great extent in view of fruitful unionization endeavors at behemoths like Starbucks (SBUX), Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL), which snatched features and motivated others to send off their own — including staple laborers at a ...

Alibaba shares fell Monday after a U.S. regulatory agency added the stock to a growing list of Chinese companies that might be kicked off Wall Street if U.S. auditors cannot inspect their financial statements. Alibaba (BABA) slid as much as 6% in Hong Kong but then pared losses to 3.8% in the afternoon. Friday's drop came after the Securities and Exchange Commission put the company on its watchlist. Investors have been worried about the Chinese tech giant Alibaba for years. In late 2020, however, the company was caught up in a sweeping crackdown on China's booming technology sector. The stock has fallen nearly 70% from its all-time high and investors have wiped out billions of dollars from Alibaba's market cap. The crackdown, coupled with a weakening economy, has slowed the revenue grow...

China's banking regulator is betrothed to increasing loans to fulfill developers' unfinished construction projects and increase their demand, as an increasing number of buyers stop buying houses due to growing home-value estimates. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) reiterated Thursday that it will provide "active credit support" for property developers, so they can complete delayed or stalled projects as soon as possible. It also urged banks to issue more mortgage loans to qualified homebuyers to support demand and prop up the property market. The regulator said previous efforts to boost property lending have been working; 90 percent of mortgage loans have been issued to first-home buyers. "The current he reached for most property-related loans in 2019," s...

Borussia Dortmund's newly signed striker Sbastien Haller has been sidelined indefinitely after being diagnosed with a testicular cancer, the club confirmed. In a statement, Borussia Dortmund said the 28-year-old had felt unwell during a training camp in Swiss Alps on Monday and proceeded to inspections. After being diagnosed with an illness, BVB striker Sébastien Haller has returned to Germany for further tests at a specialist medical facility. "This news today came as a shock to Sébastien Haller and everyone else," said Dortmund's sporting director Sebastian Kehl. "The entire BVB family hopes that Sébastien makes a full recovery as soon as possible and that we can give him a hug again soon." Haller, whose new club Borussia Dortmund had previously issued a statement expressing their ...

Wall Street wasn't thrilled by the news about Netflix losing subscribers from April through June. But the investors didn't seem to grumble about the CNN. In fact, they were cheering. Netflix shares are up more than 6% in premarket trading on Wednesday after the company reported its latest results. Analysts say that while they were worried about Netflix's earnings, it could have been much worse. "It was a 'less bad news is good news' quarter," analysts at Bespoke Investment Group said in a note to clients. Separating it: Netflix had previously pushed assumptions as low as possible, projecting that it would lose 2 million endorsers last quarter in the wake of shedding 200,000 in the initial three months of the year. That made space for a positive shock. "We're looking at losing 1 mi...

The global economy is still facing supply chain disruptions, which are contributing to high inflation. The good news is that these disruptions appear to be easing. Labor disputes involving US rail workers threaten to cloud the outlook for the global economy by creating more supply chain disruptions. The transit of goods has mostly recovered from the initial shock of the war in Ukraine, Konstantin Krebs, managing partner at Capstan Capital, an investment banking firm that works with investors in containers and container shipping, told me. He said that while it's still difficult to predict what will happen next given the unpredictable nature of global politics, he is optimistic about the future. "Containers are coming back onstream, and you can feel that," Krebs said. The Global Supply Ch...

For the first time in two decades, the exchange rate between the euro (EUR) and the US dollar has reached parity, with the exchange rate of the two currencies equal to each other. On Tuesday, the euro reached $1, which resulted in 12% worth of growth since the beginning of the year. The fears of recession in Europe are fueled by high inflation rates and energy supply uncertainty caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Because of the war in Ukraine, the European Union has attempted to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas. However, Russia has throttled back gas supplies to some EU countries and recently cut the flow in the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany by 60%. Now that critical piece of gas import infrastructure in Europe has been shut down for scheduled maintenance due to last ...

Boris Johnson will resign as UK prime minister Thursday after dozens of members of his party quit the government. But his popularity outside parliament has also been badly dented by surging inflation and stagnation in the British economy, a cost-of-living crisis that threatens to impoverish millions more people this winter, and the risk of a damaging trade war with the European Union. UK stocks surged, and the pound gained 0.75% to trade at $1.20 — recovering slightly from two-year lows hit earlier this week. "Make no mistake however, the [pound] remains severely weak due to the dire state of the UK economy which is underperforming its peers, [and] likely to enter into a recession," wrote Walid Koudmani, chief market analyst at broker XTB, in a note to clients. Whoever emerges from the ...