The Spanish telecom operator Telefonica has confirmed it had reached a deal to sell its mobile phone masts both in Europe and in South America. The deal is estimated at some 9,41 billion dollars and the buyer is the US telecom infrastructure operator American Towers, Reuters reported.

The long-expected merger of two leading payment-processing companies has stalled due to antitrust concerns, AP reported. The $5,3 billion deal between Visa and Plaid has been called off, Visa said the company cited, US Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit filed last year to block the deal.

Google News announced a special initiative aimed at fighting misinformation related to Covid-19 vaccines and the vaccination process. The initiative will be financed by a $3 million worth open global fund, Reuters reported.

German automaker Volkswagen said it tripled sales of battery-only cars in 2020, but sales of its core brand dropped by 15% to 5.3 million vehicles as the outbreak of Covid-19 and lockdowns imposed to restrict infections hit car dealerships around the world, AP reported.

Ford Motor confirmed on Monday it was stopping operations in its major Brazil facilities as pandemic forced the company to implement a global restructuring plan valued at some $11bn. In Brazil alone production will cease immediately at Ford’s plants in Camaçari and Taubaté and the firm will take pretax charges of about $4.1 billion, Reuters reported.

Some top executives at US pharmaceutical company Novavax have started selling some of their stocks in a bid to capitalize on positive outlook amid on-going trials of the firm’s Covid-19 vaccine, Reuters reported.

Toronto-Dominion Bank will have to stand trial and face charges linked to the bank’s ignorant behavior which resulted in billions of dollars damages amid the operations of a Ponzi scheme set by the Texas financier Robert Stanford, Reuters reported.

Hyundai Motor and Apple Inc plan to sign a partnership deal on autonomous electric cars by March and start production around 2024 in the United States, local newspaper Korea IT News reported on Sunday.

South Korea’s car company has sparkled some confusion initially saying it was in the "early stage" of talks with Apple over a possible EV tie-up. However some hours later Hyundai elaborated that it was in fact in talks with a number of potential partners this time not naming specifically Apple, BBC reported.

Robust market performance of the stocks of electric car maker Tesla paved the way for its chief and billionaire Elon Musk to surpass e-commerce Amazon.com chief and main shareholder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest man, Reuters reported. After this weeks stocks gains in Tesla, Musk had a net worth of more than $188,5bn, which tops by $1,5 billion Bezos.