Italy’ popular sports carmaker announced plans to join the global low carbon trend by introducing its own all-electric model, ANSA reported. The company’s chairman John Elkann told reporters that the carmaker will have a fully electric car by 2025. “We are continuing to execute our electrification strategy in a highly disciplined way,” Elkann said. “Our interpretation and application of these technologies both in motorsport and in road cars is a huge opportunity to bring the uniqueness and passion of Ferrari to new generations.”

US Cruise self-drive startup announced it had managed to raise additional 2.75 billion dollars in a funding round targeted at big key investors, Reuters reported. The latest operation boosts the market valuation of Cruise to over 30 billion dollars. The results of the funding round were released shortly after rival TuSimple announced plans for an IPO.

The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock announced very optimistic financial data and surpassed the expectations of independent experts, Reuters reported. The net inflows to BlakRock’s various funds exceeded 172 billion dollars, far above the Wall Street expectations. Net income rose to $1.2 billion, or $7.77 per share, in the three months ended 31 March, from $1.03 billion, or $6.60 per share, a year earlier. The reading was above the Refinitiv IBES estimate of $7.64 per share. BlackRock’s assets under management rose to a record $9 trillion in the quarter, compared with $6.47 trillion a year earlier.

The leading producer of processor chips TSMC announced robust growth of its sales and profits in the first three months of 2021, driven by strong demand amid global chip shortage, AP reported. The Taiwanese company is the world’s biggest contract manufacturer of processor chips. It noted that quarterly profit rose by 16.7% compared to the same period of 2020. Profit after tax rose to $4.9 billion for the three months ending in March. Total revenue rose to$12.8 billion.

The Swedish maker of electric vehicles Polestar announced it had managed to attract some 550 million dollars in external funding in a bid to support production and output capacity, Reuters reported. The firm has earmarked plans to launch a new model in the near future. Polestar is controlled by Volvo and its parent Chinese firm Geely. The company benefited from the overall positive investor sentiment to producers of electric cars such as Tesla and Nio.

The long anticipated merger deal between Virgin Media and O2 moved a step closer to being finalized as the two companies received a key backing, BBC reported. The deal is valued at some £31bn and was provisionally approved by the UK's competition watchdog. The statement has been awaited since last December when The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an investigation of the proposal.

UK biggest retailer Tesco announced a surge in 2020 sales as the company managed to adapt successfully to new business environment driven by pandemic restrictions, Reuters reported. Tesco said its revenue exceeded market expectations edging to total adjusted retail operating profit of 1.99 billion pounds after seeing “exceptionally strong” sales during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The leading Swiss bank Credit Suisse flooded the market with shares of the media conglomerate Discovery in a move to raise funds and target them to offsetting piling losses, Reuters reported. The large blocs of Discovery Inc and iQIYI Inc were put on the market after regular trading ended in Tuesday bourse session. The large share offering is linked to the meltdown of Archegos Capital which took a hit last month.

Global shipments of personal computers rose at their fastest pace in two decades in the first quarter as people bought computers to help them work and study remotely during the COVID-19 crisis, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

Europe's largest carmaker Volkswagen has agreed a wage deal with Germany's most powerful union for 120,000 employees, representing 18% of its workforce. The deal with IG Metall, struck after 14 hours of negotiations in the fifth round of talks, will see salaries rise by 2.3% from January 2022.