Square to buy Australia's Afterpay

Business Matters

In Australia's biggest ever buyout, Jack Dorsey's Square has offered to buy Afterpay. Jonathan Shapiro writes about banking and finance at The Australian Financial Review, and tells us what is so attractive about the $29bn 'buy now, pay later' giant. As day 12 of the Olympics begins in Tokyo, we hear whether Japan's hosting of the games is still unpopular given the mounting costs and increasing covid-19 cases in the country. America's Sunset Studios, behind hits such as La La Land, plans to invest almost a billion dollars creating a major new film, television and digital production complex in Hertfordshire, England. We find out more about the project from Georg Szalai, international business editor of The Hollywood Reporter. And the BBC's Ivana Davidovic reports on whether new scientific developments might help genetically modified foods to shed the suspicion with which they've been viewed by many consumers and health authorities around the world.

All this and more discussed with our two guests on opposite sides of the world: Alison Van Diggelen, host of the Fresh Dialogues interview series, in California and Peter Landers, from the Wall St Journal, in Tokyo.

(Picture: An Afterpay logo in a shop window. Picture credit: Reuters.)