09/20/18

PepsiCo agreed to buy SodaStream for $3.2bn, continuing its expansion into healthier soft-drink products. SodaStream's water-carbonating machines, with accompanying flavours, were popular in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s.

It was bought by an Israeli company in 1998 and branded as a wholesome alternative to sugary drinks. Slack was valued at $7.1bn following its latest round of fundraising, up by 40% from its previous valuation nearly a year ago.

The office messaging app is used by 8m people on a daily basis. Following criticism from Chinese state media for not doing enough to delete banned content, Apple pulled apps from its App Store in China that offer gambling services.

Betting apps are illegal in China. In its first earnings report since going public in July, Xiaomi said revenue had increased by 68% in the second quarter, to 45bn yuan ($6.6bn), helping it turn a net profit of 14.6bn yuan.

The Chinese smartphone-maker is expanding overseas; international sales now account for over a third of revenues and it has overtaken Samsung to become India's biggest seller of smartphones.

Its smart-devices business is also looking perky; sales of smart-TVs were up by 350%. Air France-KLM found a new chief executive.

The airline said that Ben Smith would take up the position, a job that has been vacant since May after the sudden departure of Jean-Marc Janaillac amid a protracted pay dispute with unions. Mr Smith, a Canadian, is the first non-Frenchman to run Air France.

French unions balked at his appointment and threatened strike action. The S&P 500 index chalked up 3,453 days without entering bear territory, defined as a drop of at least 20%.

Many declared it a record for a stock-market bull run. Others questioned that, maintaining that the market stayed just out of bear territory in 1990-and that the 4,494 days from December 1987 to March 2000 constitute the true record-holder.