(Reuters) – Private equity Apollo Global Management (APO.N) will buy U.S. information technology equipment distributor Tech Data (TECD.O) in a deal valued at $5.4 billion, the companies said on Wednesday. Excluding debt, the deal is valued at about $4.77 billion, according to Reuters calculations based on the number of outstanding shares as of July 31. […]

Banks were once to the economy what the heart is to the body. Pumping vital funds through the system, and scarcely noticed until there was a clot. After the coronary arrest of the crash, perceptions changed; hardly surprising, given the €64bn public funding transfusion required to get them back on their feet. Now that they […]

The impeachment inquiry and the events that led to it tell many stories. One, obviously, is about the abuse of power. Another illuminates the foul mash of mendacity and paranoia at the core of Donald Trump. But this week, as several longtime civil servants testify at the inquiry’s first public hearings, a third narrative demands […]

PRAGUE — Thirty autumns ago, across Central and Eastern Europe, everything fell in one great swoop. The foliage. The Berlin Wall. The fear that for decades had kept Communist police states in power. That fall of 1989 was a wondrous time, and nowhere more so than in this beautiful ancient city on the Vltava River. […]

For many in the West, Russia’s return to the world stage over the past few years has come as a surprise, and not an especially pleasant one. After the downfall of the Soviet Union, the country was written off as yesterday’s snow, a regional power, a filling station masquerading as a state. Five years later, […]

On Friday, House investigators released the transcript of the former National Security Council official Fiona Hill’s testimony from last month. It showed a Republican staff member trying and failing to get Hill to concede that there might be some validity to the conspiracy theories underlying Donald Trump’s demands of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. “Are […]

To the Editor: Re “You Must Never Vote for Bloomberg” (column, Nov. 11): Charles M. Blow’s diatribe against Michael R. Bloomberg is a perfect example of why American progressives almost never succeed in electing anybody. At the end of three terms of Mr. Bloomberg’s mayoralty in New York City, The New York Times said: “The […]

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Active Ownership Capital (AOC), the third-largest shareholder of German renewable firm PNE AG (PNEGn.DE), does not plan to accept a standing 4.00 euro per share bid from a Morgan Stanley (MS.N) controlled fund, PNE said on Monday. AOC “does not intend to accept the offer”, PNE said in its reasoned opinion on […]

Senator and Dáil by-election candidate Lorraine Clifford-Lee is Fianna Fáil’s justice, equality, children and youth affairs spokeswoman in the Seanad.  But views she expressed on Twitter in 2011 and 2012 raise major questions about her suitability for that role and her bid for a Dáil seat in Dublin Fingal in the by-election on November 29. […]

Welcoming and entertaining visitors is part of our character as a people. We have an open and welcoming nature and, with global connections through emigration and family ties, we are outward-looking. Offering hospitality is not just in our nature, it is now an economic mainstay. It is a life-source for our dispersed communities and an […]