Australia has given clearance for Singapore Airlines’s SilkAir to store its six Boeing 737 Max aircraft in the country, as the global grounding of the jet continues following two deadly crashes within the past 12 months.

The Ford Motor Company has been dealt a blow by credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service, which has cut the carmaker’s credit rating to junk on doubts that a turnaround plan by chief executive Jim Hackett will generate earnings and cash quickly enough.

Boris Johnson has been the UK’s leader for just over a week, but he and his ‘Brexit war cabinet’ have achieved one milestone already: The pound has slumped to its lowest level against the US dollar and the euro since 2017.

McDonald’s is acquiring a decision-logic technology company to better personalise menus as part of its digital push.

In a world where iPhone demand is on the wane, Apple has a plan B. As customers wait longer between upgrades and the smartphone market saturates, Apple can fall back on charging higher prices for each handset and raking in more money from services such as streaming music, digital videos, and data storage.

Irish stores will not be affected by Marks & Spencer’s plan to close more than 100 of its clothing and home stores in the next five years, the company has said.

A seven-day surge in technology stocks has ended after President Donald Trump blocked Singapore-based chipmaker Broadcom's effort to buy Qualcomm.

WPP cut its sales forecast for a second time in three months, as clients further reduced marketing spending, adding to evidence of the advertising industry’s distress.

Google has agreed to buy part of HTC’s engineering and design teams for $1.1 billion (€923m), taking on a cadre of veterans that worked on the Pixel phone and could bolster its nascent hardware business.

Fiat Chrysler, lacking a potential deal to combine with another carmaker anytime soon, will push ahead with separating from its components business, chief executive Sergio Marchionne said.

LVMH shares rose to a record in Paris after the luxury leader’s sales far exceeded estimates on rebounding demand for items from Louis Vuitton bags to Hennessy cognac.

Output from Ugandan crude deposits being developed by companies including Tullow Oil and Total is unlikely to be exported as soon as the nation expects because of the scale of the infrastructure projects required to move the fuel out of the country.

Caterpillar is the best- performing US industrial stock this year on bets its cost-cutting efforts will reap rewards as demand recovers. The problem is, demand is not recovering.

BlackBerry sales fall short of estimates

The European Commission may deliver its verdict on Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland as soon as next month, according to Finance Minister Michael Noonan, offering the first clues to a firm timeline for a decision.

Microsoft is acquiring professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2bn (€23.19bn) in one of the largest tech-industry deals on record, as the maker of Windows software attempts to put itself at the centre of people’s business lives.

As oil flirts with $50 a barrel, investors are trading drilling stocks as if crude were selling for $80, and that’s the kind of optimism that leads to corrections.

Sanofi says it has sent a letter to Medivation’s board, urging the company to engage in negotiations regarding the French drugmaker’s unsolicited $9.3bn (€8.1bn) takeover offer and threatening to go directly to shareholders if talks don’t begin.

The US may be the lone bright spot in an otherwise sluggish global economy as American consumers continue to buy expensive new vehicles at record levels.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is destabilising the US market, adding to the Swiss watch industry’s challenges this year, according to Marc Hayek, who heads Breguet, the maker of $100,000 (€88,750) luxury timepieces owned by Swatch Group.

Deutsche Bank plans to buy back about $5.4bn of bonds in euros and dollars as it seeks to allay investor concerns about its finances.

Official economic numbers are famously rubbery. China’s exports to Hong Kong in December rose 30% from the previous month and overtook shipments to the US and the European Union, according to customs data released earlier this week which economists put down to fake invoicing by mainland businesses trying to evade currency restrictions.

Global Bioenergies, an unprofitable French maker of sugar-based petrol, said crude oil’s recent slump to $35 a barrel is testing the financial viability of its technology even as it plans expansion in the US.

Baxalta jumped to a four-and-a-half-month high yesterday on reports that rival drug maker Shire — the US firm formally based in Ireland — is in advanced talks to acquire it.

China’s first official economic report of the year suggested manufacturing weakened for a fifth straight month in December, the longest such streak since 2009.

The seaborne coal market is heading into 2016 with the biggest glut in at least four years.

Greece’s economy expanded 0.8% in the second quarter, a forecast-busting figure that defied all expectations.

Walt Disney Co fell the most in four years after posting third-quarter sales that fell short of analysts’ estimates and cutting its forecast for cable-TV profit.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group is one of many prospective bidders that have shown an interest in buying Granite, a £13bn (€18.3bn) mortgage securitisation vehicle earmarked for sale by the UK government.