Financial Services

Philip Morris International Inc. PM 1.79% is in advanced talks to acquire Swedish Match SWMA -0.58% AB, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that could be valued at roughly $15 billion or more and bolster the tobacco giant’s exposure to the rapidly growing market for smoke-free brands.The talks between U.S.-based Philip Morris and Stockholm-based Swedish Match could yield a deal as soon as this week,…

Some hospitals grappling with rising nurse salaries are seeking to raise prices by up to 15%, touching off contract fights with health insurers and businesses and threatening higher premiums. Neither of the chains would specify the price increases they are requesting, but people familiar with negotiations say some hospitals are asking to increase their prices by 7.5% to 15%.…

Psychiatrists and psychologists once ran their own practices. Now the local therapist office could be controlled by a buyout king.Venture capitalists and private-equity firms are pouring billions of dollars into mental-health businesses, including psychology offices, psychiatric facilities, telehealth platforms for online therapy, new drugs, meditation apps and other digital tools. Nine mental-health startups have reached private valuations exceeding $1 billion last year, including Cerebral Inc. and BetterUp Inc. Demand…

The decline of bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, mirrored the slide of the overall stock market. Photo: Kin Cheung/Associated Press…

WASHINGTON— Nvidia Corp. NVDA -0.90% has agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle a regulatory investigation that found it didn’t adequately reveal the impact of cryptomining on its sales of powerful chips designed for computer gaming. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Nvidia’s sales of its graphics processing units, or GPUs, were materially boosted in its 2018 fiscal year by consumers who bought them to mine new units of…

Roku Inc. ROKU 5.83% has teamed with private-equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc. APO 3.73% to bid for a minority stake in the pay-TV and streaming service Starz, which is known for series like “Outlander” and “Power,” according to people familiar with the situation. In November, movie and television production company Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.…

CEO Jamie Iannone says the company is better positioned to withstand changing consumer habits—and rising inflation. CEO Jamie Iannone says the company is better positioned to withstand changing consumer habits—and rising inflation. FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS Read original article here Denial of responsibility! Techno Blender is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to…

WASHINGTON—The Securities and Exchange Commission will boost the size of its special unit devoted to investigating cryptocurrency frauds and other misconduct, a move that follows the agency’s aggressive push to get the unregulated industry to come under federal supervision. The SEC said it plans to add 20 investigators and litigators to its Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, which was created in September 2017 when regulators noticed a surge of new digital coins sold to the public. The…

European Union antitrust authorities on Monday charged Apple Inc. AAPL 0.20% with abusing its dominant position by restricting access to the technology underpinning contactless payments on its mobile devices, adding to the bloc’s efforts to clamp down on alleged anticompetitive behavior by some of the world’s biggest tech companies.The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said it took issue with Apple’s decision to prevent mobile-wallet app developers from…

AURORA, Colo.—Ukrainian forces hunting Russian tanks and tracking troop movement are being aided by imagery from a growing number of commercial spy satellites, giving Kyiv access to intelligence once the domain of only a few governments.Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on his neighbor has coincided with a boom in the number and sophistication of commercial surveillance satellites, with hundreds now in orbit. Company officials say they are streaming data to the U.S. and allied governments, sometimes directly to…