Alibaba is at the forefront of a bid of as much as $2.6 billion that would take Intime Retail Group private as part of Alibaba’s efforts to counteract slowing online sales growth. The privatization of Intime might help Alibaba modernize China’s $4.5 trillion brick-and-mortar retail...
McDonald’s Corp. has reached a pact to sell most of its China- and Hong Kong–based operations to Citic, the Chinese state-backed entity, along with Carlyle Group for as much $2.1 billion. The ownership structure shakes out to 32 percent for Citic, and affiliate Citic Capital...
Cash withdrawals set a record on Dec. 23 in the U.K., with Brits withdrawing £730 million from LINK cash machines. Consumers took out the money in the run-up to Christmas to the tune of close to £100 million more than Dec. 24, the record day...
On this year’s National Returns Day (Jan. 5), more than 1.3 million packages were shipped back to retailers, with a total of 5.8 million slated to find their way back sometime this week. That’s up nearly 30 percent from 1 million packages on last year’s National...
Macy’s announced that it will close down another 68 stores and cut an additional 6,200 jobs following disappointing holiday sales. Some of those closings — nine, to be exact — had already been announced, and three have actually already been shut down. The remaining 59...
In 2017, Starbucks is planning to expand its store footprint 8 percent over the course of the next nine months and grow worldwide sales about 5 percent. With a growing presence, Starbucks could see revenue expand in the double digits and earnings per share increase...
According to Nielsen, last year was a big year for digital, including new devices, new apps and the market for virtual reality (VR) devices. Facebook topped the smartphone app category with 146 million average unique monthly users, up 14 percent over last year. Its sister app, Facebook...
Paytm, the mobile wallet provider in India, is gearing up to bring on board 5 million merchants — more than tripling its current merchant customer count of 1.5 million. India’s 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee banknotes being taken out of circulation prompted countless Indian consumers to look...
Apple has officially outperformed Samsung in holiday sales this year. The ongoing informal battle was won by Apple by two to one. This year, 44 percent of new phone and tablet activation were Apple devices. Samsung saw 21 percent. While Samsung is slowly growing in...
