Shares in Softbank jumped on Friday after a media report said the Japanese conglomerate’s talks with a US rival over a potential merger were progressing.

Ping An Good Doctor, a Chinese healthcare and technology company, has raised HK$8.77bn ($1.1bn) in the largest Hong Kong flotation this year, paving the way for a string of blockbuster tech listings in the coming months.

Japanese retail sales grew at a slower pace in March, missing estimates, while a preliminary reading for industrial output posted a second consecutive month of growth.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday walked across the military demarcation line dividing the two Koreas to be greeted by South Korean president Moon Jae-in for their first inter-Korean summit over a decade aimed at ending decades of conflict and dismantling Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons.

The US and China may be far apart on disputes over trade and investment, but when it comes to bond yields the two sides are moving closer.

Shares in Chinese search engine Baidu jumped in after-hours trading after the company’s revenue and earnings growth sailed past Wall Street forecasts.

Expedia, the operator of travel-booking services and websites, saw shares lift off on Thursday, after it reported better-than-expected quarterly sales and a loss that was not as deep as feared.

Amazon is increasing the annual cost of its Prime membership scheme by $20 to $119 a year in the US.

Mattel has welcomed its new chief executive with a set of quarterly results that showed the toymaker’s sales sliding in the wake of retailer Toys R Us’s liquidation, though less quickly than analysts had feared.

Starbucks turned in better than expected sales growth in the first few months of 2018, even as it said it was unclear how its full-year projections might be affected by plans to close more than 8,000 US stores for an afternoon in May to conduct racial bias training after fallout from an incident at one of its Philadelphia cafés.

Continued solid growth for its cloud computing business drive revenues for Microsoft in its third quarter as it surpassed Wall Street’s earnings expectations.

Amazon shares leapt as much as 7 per cent in after-hours trading to touch a new all-time high, after the ecommerce group posted earnings that were more than twice as good as Wall Street had expected.

Intel’s shares surged nearly 6 per cent in after-market trading as the chipmaker turned in revenue $1bn ahead of market estimates and boosted its forecast for the rest of the year by 4 per cent.

Technology stocks were the stars on Thursday, helping drive gains of about 1 per cent or more for all the major equities indices, while closely watched long-term borrowing costs eased a touch.

A jury in Pennsylvania on Thursday convicted comedian Bill Cosby on charges of sexual assault, in the first major trial since the #MeToo movement got under way last year.

A British banker found guilty of defrauding a client in a $3.5bn currency deal has received two years of prison time in the US after a judge denied his request to serve the sentence in the UK.

The UK Environment Department (Defra) has hired an extra 1,150 staff to deal specifically with Brexit, in a sign of how its resources are being diverted towards the challenges of leaving the EU.

The UK’s top financial watchdog has slammed plans by European regulators to shake up the rules governing asset managers after Brexit.

The US Senate has signed off on Mike Pompeo, a former congressman and CIA director, to replace ousted ex-Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

Tech stocks look set to end their lengthy losing streak in style on Thursday after strong corporate earnings underpinned gains for some of the sector’s biggest names.

Trouble at Steinhoff, the international retail conglomerate ensnared in South Africa’s biggest-ever accounting scandal, deepened after its largest shareholder sued to claw back $4.7bn from the company.

Order up at Chipotle. The fast-casual burrito chain is cruising towards its best-ever one-day gain after its first earnings report under new chief executive Brian Niccol unleashed a wave of optimism about its prospects of finally turning a corner from the food-safety crisis that has dogged it.

Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, has announced she is expecting her first child but will continue to lead the party she is credited with bringing back from the political wilderness.

Investors at Weir, the Scottish engineering company, have voted overwhelmingly in favour of ditching a controversial kind of executive reward scheme, marking a milestone on the path towards reform of boardroom pay.