Business blog

For almost a decade, Facebook has fretted over an existential problem: it is failing to attract young users in the US.

Internal documents show that the number of US Facebook users under 30 is in decline and that Instagram, which has been phenomenally popular since being bought by Facebook in 2012 for $1bn, appears to be reaching the limits of its growth among younger users in key markets, raising serious questions about the company’s future.

Now, one of the company’s solutions to its growth challenges — encouraging users to open multiple accounts — is causing technical, reputational and legal headaches.

Shares in China Evergrande fell sharply as the company’s stock resumed trading on Thursday after the Chinese real estate developer disclosed that a plan to sell its property services division had collapsed.

Evergrande’s Hong Kong-listed stock closed down 12.5 per cent after the end of the two-week trading suspension, while shares of affiliate Evergrande Property Services, which were also frozen during the same period, fell 8 per cent.

Shares in Evergrande New Energy Vehicle, the developer’s electric vehicle subsidiary which has traded in Hong Kong without interruption in recent weeks, fell as much as 14 per cent but pared losses

Prices of new homes across China’s biggest cities fell in September, the first month-on-month decline since April 2015 and a sign that sustained weakness across the country’s real estate industry was feeding through into the property market.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed new home prices dropped in more than half of the 70 cities it surveyed compared with August. Goldman Sachs’ analysis of the figures found a 0.5 per cent decline in prices on an annualised basis after including seasonal adjustments.

The data will add to pressure on policymakers, who have sought to cool the country’s vast

BHP maintained full-year production targets for every one of its sectors despite pressures created by labour shortages, the Anglo-Australian mining group said in its quarterly operational review on Tuesday.

The company said that pandemic-induced labour shortages had hit its iron ore operations in Western Australia, just days after rival Rio Tinto cut its yearly production forecasts for the same reasons.

BHP said iron ore production in Western Australia had fallen 6 per cent to 62m tonnes since the previous quarter, dragging its quarterly output of the steelmaking ingredient down 4 per cent year-on-year.

It said that the drop was mainly

Currency traders say the yen could be poised for further losses after the Japanese currency slumped to its lowest level against the dollar in three years, squeezed by the rising cost of the imported energy on which the world’s third-largest economy depends.

The yen sank to ¥114.38 to the US dollar on Saturday, a level not seen since late 2018, after three weeks of steep declines. Investors say the global surge in energy, which means Japan’s importers will have to sell increasing quantities of yen to purchase oil and gas, has triggered the recent moves.

But the yen has also

While EU officials have argued in Brussels this month over the relative merits of nuclear energy and gas, residents of a small town 60km east of the Belgian capital had a more pressing concern: if Belgium gets rid of nuclear power, where will it get its gas from?

“Everyone around us is stopping gas. Where are we going to get ours from? Putin? What will we do if he switches the tap off?” said Heidi Haesevoets at a protest this month against a planned gas-fired power plant in her home town of Tessenderlo.

Belgium, sandwiched between pro-nuclear France and pro-gas