How bad could it get? America’s ugly election

Scrubbing up nicely

Unilever

became the first big

provider of everyday house-

hold goods to commit to green

sourcing for its cleaning and

laundry products. The con-

glomerate, which sells a wide

range of familiar brands, in-

cluding Persil (in Britain), Surf

and Domestos, said that it

would shift to renewable or

recycled sources of carbon, and

by 2030 no longer use chemi-

cals derived from fossil-fuel

feedstocks, such as petroleum

and natural gas.

With 

food allergies

on the rise,

Nestlé struck a deal to buy

Aimmune Therapeutics, which

makes the only approved

remedy in America to treat a

reaction to peanuts among

children. Up to 240m people

worldwide suffer with food

allergies, peanut allergy being

the most common.

Lee Jae-yong

, the de facto boss

of Samsung, was indicted on

new charges in South Korea,

including manipulating share

prices. The latest claims focus

on the merger in 2015 of two of

the conglomerate’s affiliates.

Mr Lee is already being retried

in a related bribery case. 

Zoom’s

customer base (firms

with at least ten employees)

rose by 458% in the three

months ending July compared

with the same quarter last year,

generating soaring profits. 

India’s

Supreme Court com-

promised and gave the coun-

try’s mobile-phone operators

ten years to pay a collective

$13bn in retrospective licence

fees and penalties that an

earlier ruling found were owed

to the government. The court

had been insisting on immedi-

ate payment, which threatened

to wipe out Vodafone’s venture

in the country. 

In a surprise announcement,

SoftBank

said it would sell

$14bn-worth of shares in its

telecoms business, which it

bought from Vodafone in 2006,

reducing its stake from 62% to

40%. Proceeds of the sale will

go some way towards shoring

up the debt-laden conglomer-

ate’s balance-sheet.