Bloomberg Talks on the latest Sears takeover bid from Chairman Eddie Lampert continued late into Monday evening as stakeholders tried to reach an agreement on whether Sears Holdings Corp should live on. Negotiators initially didn’t embrace Lampert’s revised rescue plan for the bankrupt retailer, but they were concentrating on his proposal rather than competing bids from liquidators, according to people ...

Bloomberg Boohoo Group Plc lifted its full-year growth forecast after the online apparel seller’s Instagram-fuelled marketing strategy paid off over the holidays, offering a measure of relief to an embattled UK retail sector. The group lifted its growth forecast for the year to a range of 43 percent to 45 percent from a previous 38 percent to 43 percent after ...

Bloomberg Some airport security lanes in Atlanta, Washington and Houston were closed as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) continued to grapple with more absenteeism during the partial government shutdown. The TSA will begin relocating airport screening officers “on a national basis to meet staffing shortages that cannot be addressed locally,” the federal agency said in a tweet. The TSA will ...

Bloomberg Lululemon Athletica Inc rose the most in more than four months after the yogawear company boosted its quarterly sales and profit forecast ahead of the ICR Conference in Orlando this week. The move follows a series of holiday sales misses last week and prompted a chorus of praise from analysts. “In what is turning out to be a more ...

Bloomberg About half of Chinese consumers say they’re planning to spend more on luxury purchases this year in a recent survey as concerns mount that the slowing and trade war-battered economy may dent demand in the key market for premium goods. Weeks after Apple Inc said that lower-than-expected Chinese demand is hurting earnings, a new survey of 1,385 affluent consumers ...

Bloomberg Italy’s top oil producer and Oman’s energy minister predict the latest oil rebound will stick. Prices are up more than 20 percent since hitting an almost two-year low in December. Oman Oil Minister Mohammed Al-Rumhi told Bloomberg TV that the agreement between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners including Russia and Oman can sustain prices at $60 ...

Bloomberg S&P Global Ratings cut the credit rating of Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farms to junk, noting that the plant counts on embattled utility giant PG&E Corp for all of its revenue. S&P lowered ratings on Topaz Solar by five notches to ‘B’ from ‘BBB-’ and maintained the ratings on CreditWatch, meaning it may make further cuts. In ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc offered some hope that the worst is over for its bond-trading business after the toughest quarter for that unit in seven years. The lender’s shares jumped almost 4 percent, the most in the S&P 500 Index, after Chief Financial Officer John Gerspach said the trading environment was starting to improve this month. The brighter outlook came after ...

Bloomberg Big investment banks scored a victory in their campaign to soften global rules, as regulators reduced the capital hit from new trading-book standards by nearly half. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said its final market-risk standards will drive up banks’ trading-book capital requirements by a weighted average of about 22 percent from current levels. That’s down from the ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida left open the possibility the US central bank will raise interest rates in 2019 fewer than the two times projected by policy makers at their last meeting. “A lot has really happened since the first week of December,” Clarida said in an interview on Fox Business Network. “Some of the global growth data ...