Good morning! Here’s what you need to know in markets on Wednesday.
Apple reported its first annual revenue decline in 15 years as sales of the iPhone continue to shrink. Wall Street frets that the world’s most valuable company doesn’t have a game-changing new product to revive its growth and shares of Apple’s stock slipped about 2% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
Oil is diving on reports that Russia isn’t keen on a production cut deal. Brent oil is down 1.22% at the time of writing (6.35 a.m. BST/1.35 a.m. ET) to $50.17 (£41.24) and US crude is down 1.38% to $49.27 (£40.50).
Volkswagen will pay $14.7 billion (£12 billion) to put an end to its year-long emissions cheating scandal in the US. A US federal judge on Tuesday approved Volkswagen’s record-setting settlement with regulators and owners of 475,000 polluting diesel vehicles, and the German automaker said it would begin buying back the vehicles in mid-November.
Asian stock markets are lacking confidence. Japan’s Nikkei is up 0.02% at the time of writing (6.30 a.m. BST/1.30 a.m. ET), the Shanghai Composite is down 0.42%, and the Hong Kong Hang Seng is down 0.17%. US markets fell overnight.
Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman has a blunt assessment on Brexit. Speaking at the Bloomberg The Year Ahead conference, he said that for the financial sector, there's "nothing good" about the UK's decision to leave the European Union.
Deutsche Bank is exploring alternatives to paying bonuses in cash as CEO John Cryan seeks to boost capital buffers and shore up investor confidence, according to Bloomberg. Bloomberg says executives at the German lender have informally discussed options including giving some bankers shares in the non-core unit instead of cash bonuses, according to sources who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
Tycoon Carlos Slim's construction arm is in talks with his majority-owned construction firm FCC and rival Spanish builder Acciona to jointly bid on a coveted $3.5 billion (£2.87 billion) Mexico City airport terminal project, five people familiar with the matter said. Carso Infraestructura y Construccion, part of Slim's Grupo Carso, is hashing out a deal to form the consortium, which would include three other Mexican companies - all its partners from a winning bid for one of the airport's runways, four of the people said in recent days, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Music streaming service Pandora cut its full-year revenue forecast and reported lower-than-expected quarterly results amid intense competition. The company's shares were down 5.5% in after-hours trading on Tuesday.
Two London start-ups have joined forces on a platform to process currency trades with blockchain technology, in an effort to cut settlement times and costs in the $5 trillion-a-day (£4.10 trillion) global foreign exchange market. Cobalt DL, fronted by former Citi and Deutsche Bank currencies supremo Andy Coyne and backed by 15 major foreign exchange market participants, is partnering with fellow London-based firm SETL, which says it can settle transactions via the blockchain almost instantly.
A German fintech startup that lets people access the best interest rates from multiple banks without having to open up new accounts with each lender has passed €1 billion (£890 million, $1.1 billion) in deposits on its platform. Deposit Solutions, which is backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, announced on Tuesday that it had reached the milestone in just 13 months through its customer-facing operation ZINSPILOT.
