Amazon Web Services (AWS) is planning to invest a total of $8.9bn (A$13.2bn) across its planned data centre regions in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, over the next five years, at a time when its parent company Amazon has been cutting costs and laying off thousands of workers.

The cloud services provider said on April 4 that it would invest about $7.45bn into its cloud region in Sydney, while the remaining $1.49bn will be used to expand their data centre infrastructure in Melbourne. The company has already invested about $6bn in Australia since 2012.

Rianne Van Veldhuizen, the managing director of AWS in Australia and New Zealand said that their investment will contribute an estimated $23.6bn to Australia’s gross domestic product. It is expected to support 11,000 jobs annually by 2027.

The news comes barely two weeks after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s March 20 announcement of plans to cut an additional 9000 jobs across the global business. The new layoffs, which follow the 18,000 job cuts in January, are to be mostly in AWS, advertising, the streaming platform Twitch and Amazon’s people experience and technology solutions team.

Disney pledges $17bn to Florida 

The US-based entertainment giant Disney has said it is planning to invest $17bn in Florida over the next decade, as it manages a spat with the state’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis over its opposition to controversial legislation.

In a shareholder meeting held on April 3, Disney CEO Bob Iger said the governor’s retaliation to the company taking a position on the legislation “sounds not just anti-business, but it sounds anti-Florida”.

While initially deciding to stay neutral, Disney publicly opposed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act — commonly referred to by opponents as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill — which restricts schools in the state from teaching about sexual orientation and gender issues. 

In response, Mr DeSantis and Florida lawmakers moved to remove the virtual autonomy Disney enjoyed over its 24,000-acre parcel of land surrounding the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando. Disney’s decision has been widely discussed as a symbol of the more active role businesses are taking in the debate over social and political issues.

“A company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals,” said Mr Iger, who accused Mr DeSantis of seeking to “punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right”.

Bayer to invest €60m in Ukraine

German pharmaceutical giant Bayer is planning to invest €60m into projects across Ukraine, according to a television interview with German vice chancellor Robert Habeck.

In an interview from Ukraine’s capital Kiev with the German broadcaster ZDF’s ‘Heute journal’ programme, Mr Habeck announced several projects in the war-torn country. These included Bayer’s investment and expansion of capacities in the production of building materials, without giving any more specific details.

Mr Habeck, who also serves as Germany’s minister for economic affairs and climate action, said that Ukraine could also require structural change to build out its future energy security and supply.

And finally, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development said it will invest €13m through a local currency bond to help make Kazakhstan’s electricity grid more sustainable and reliable.