Bloomberg UK retail sales unexpectedly increased for a third consecutive month in March, underlying the resilience of consumers in the face of Brexit uncertainty. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.1 percent from February, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Sales excluding auto fuel increased 1.2 percent. Both measures had been expected to show a …

Bloomberg US aviation accident investigators have opened a probe into how an American Airlines plane struck a runway sign while taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International airport, forcing the plane back to the airport where it landed safely. The plane, an Airbus SE A321 headed for Los Angeles carrying 102 passengers and eight crew members, hit the …

Bloomberg In a rare retreat for Amazon.com Inc, the e-commerce giant plans to shut down its Chinese marketplace business in July as it shifts its focus to offering mainland consumers overseas products rather than goods from local sellers. Amazon will keep running its other businesses in China, including Amazon Web Services, Kindle e-books, and cross-border operations that help ship goods …

Bloomberg UK house prices stagnated in March as the number of transactions plunged, according to LSL Acadata. Values were flat on an annual basis last month as falls in London and southern England offset gains elsewhere, the firm said in a report. In March alone, prices rose just 0.1 percent, and transactions fell a seasonally-adjusted 15 percent, despite the month …

Bloomberg US new-home construction unexpectedly fell in March, decelerating to the slowest pace since May 2017 and suggesting builders remain wary even as lower mortgage rates and steady wage gains offer support to consumers. Residential starts fell 0.3 percent to a 1.139 million annualised rate after a downwardly revised 1.142 million pace in the prior month, according to government figures …

Bloomberg Emirates NBD PJSC posted a 15 percent increase in first-quarter profit as lending rose and margins improved at Dubai’s biggest bank. First-quarter profit rose to AED2.74 billion ($747 million) from AED2.39 billion, the bank said in a statement. The mean estimates of three analysts compiled by the lender was for a profit of AED2.5 billion. The rise in profit …

Emirates Business Economic activity in the UAE is set to accelerate to 2.2% in 2019, up from an estimated 1.7% in 2018, according to ICAEW’s latest Economic Insight report. This will be buoyed by a pick-up in non-oil activity, rising public spending at the Federal and Emirate levels, higher investment ahead of the highly anticipated Expo 2020 and continued regional …

Bloomberg Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. is considering selling as much as 25 percent of its refinery business in a deal that could fetch at least $10 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. Reliance is sounding out potential investors including state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Aramco) to gauge the interest, according to the people, who asked …

Bloomberg Almost 15 months into the job, and the boss of South Africa’s state-owned electricity company is getting to grips with issues spanning corruption to defective power plants that threatened to collapse the grid. “The days of surprises are over,” Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. CEO Phakamani Hadebe said in an interview. “We just have to speed up the process of …

Bloomberg Angela Merkel will leave Brexit worries by the shoreline as she cuts the opening ribbon on a giant wind farm out in the Baltic Sea, a move that will do little to gloss over her tarnished reputation as Germany’s climate chancellor. The Arkona wind park, a joint venture of utility EON SE and Norway’s oil and gas giant Equinor …