Reuters Business News

Asian stocks clung to gains on Wednesday, helped by a bounce in Australian shares, but risks for equities remain large as the coronavirus pandemic rattles the underpinnings of the global economy.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Tuesday he had ordered the city's human rights commission to open an investigation into the dismissal of a worker at an Amazon.com warehouse who participated in a walkout.

U.S. printer maker Xerox Holdings Corp walked away from its $35 billion hostile cash-and-stock bid for HP Inc on Tuesday, after the coronavirus outbreak weighed on its campaign to take over the PC and printing equipment manufacturer.

Fiat Chrysler did not mention any possible delay in the merger process with France's PSA during a call with unions on Tuesday, metal workers' union FIOM said.

The Trump administration plans to lease out space for energy companies to store oil in the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, after a previous effort to buy millions of barrels for the emergency stockpile was canceled over a lack of funding, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Risk currencies looked fragile and the yen firmed on Wednesday, the first day of a quarter that looks set to see the worst economic contractions for decades in many countries as they scramble to tackle the coronavirus epidemic.

Crude oil benchmarks opened the month mixed on Wednesday, following their biggest-ever quarterly and monthly losses, overshadowed by fears of global oversupply as data showed a bigger-than-expected rise in inventories in the United States.

Bond investor and DoubleLine Capital Chief Executive Jeffrey Gundlach said on Tuesday he believes the coronavirus sell-off is not over yet and that the lows stocks hit in March will be surpassed in April due to uncertainty over the outbreak.

Asian shares faced another leg lower on Wednesday as the coronavirus sharply slows global growth, leading a gauge of world stocks to post its biggest quarterly decline in more than a decade and oil prices to trade near lows last seen in 2002.

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to announce as soon as Wednesday it will allow oil companies to lease space in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), as it tries to comply with President Trump's directive to fill the facility to capacity, two industry sources said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would join Saudi Arabia and Russia, if need be, for talks about the sharp fall in oil prices resulting from a price war between the two countries.

Top U.S. officials have for now put aside a proposal for an alliance with Saudi Arabia to manage the global oil market, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter, an idea one of them said came from White House national security advisers.

The U.S. Transportation Department on Tuesday proposed that passenger airlines should be required to maintain minimum numbers of flights as a condition for receiving aid from the government's $50 billion grant and loan fund.

Macy's Inc will be removed from the benchmark S&P 500 stock index , the S&P Dow Jones Indices said on Tuesday, as coronavirus-induced store closures compound the retail sector's struggles with a shift to online shopping.

An independent group of workers at Whole Foods Market called on colleagues to phone in sick to the grocer's stores on Tuesday to protest what they say is a lack of adequate compensation and protections from the coronavirus.

Zoom Video Communications Inc's average user numbers in March were nearly three times that of its nearest rival Microsoft Corp's Teams, according to research firm Apptopia, as the cornonavirus-driven stay-at-home lifted demand for video conferencing platforms.

Wall Street's three major indexes tumbled on Tuesday, with the Dow registering its biggest quarterly decline since 1987 and the S&P 500 suffering its deepest quarterly drop since the financial crisis on growing evidence of massive economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic.

Caterpillar Inc on Tuesday said it will not hand out annual salary increases this year as part of cost cut plan to deal with the coronavirus economic fallout.

Citigroup Inc said on Tuesday it would postpone its 2020 investor day that was scheduled to take place on May 13 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

JetBlue Airways Corp plans to reduce daily flights in and out of the four New York City-area airports where it operates by as much as 80% in April as part of wider schedule cuts due to the coronavirus outbreak, a spokesman said.