If you see a flowering of “palm-oil free” labels on supermarket shelves next year, then thank Indonesian drivers, President Donald Trump’s trade negotiators, and sickly pigs in China. Palm oil — the red, semi-solid fat used in everything from noodles and soap to pastry and lipstick — has rarely been less attractive to consumer-product manufacturers. That isn’t so much a ...

When the European Union’s MiFID II financial rule-book was rolled out in 2018, asset management veteran Martin Gilbert warned of the unintended consequences for the bankers and brokers supplying trading services and investment research to his industry. With fund managers suddenly forced to budget and pay for investment research ideas separately from their actual trades, it seemed inevitable that overall ...

India is trying something new. After watching the shadow banking industry collapse in slow motion for more than a year, authorities have decided that enough is enough. They want to experiment with in-court bankruptcy for nonbank lenders. But will going to a haircut salon leave the financial system any neater? Dewan Housing Finance Corp. will be the test case of ...

Bloomberg LVMH agreed to buy Tiffany & Co for more than $16 billion in the largest luxury-goods deal ever, raising the French conglomerate’s profile in jewellery and giving it access to a broader swath of shoppers in the US and Asia. The owner of the Louis Vuitton brand agreed to pay $135 a share for the US jeweller, according to ...

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc is counting on a smartphone app known for cheap deals to lure Chinese consumers during the Black Friday online spree, in a partnership that extends to the end of the year. The US e-commerce giant’s cross-border unit has just opened a storefront on Pinduoduo (PDD), China’s No. 3 online retailer after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and JD.com ...

Bloomberg Allen Onyema, the Nigerian businessman who owns the country’s largest airline, was indicted by US authorities on charges of fraud and money laundering. He allegedly moved “more than $20 million from Nigeria through United States bank accounts in a scheme involving false documents based on the purchase of airplanes,” according to a statement by the US Department of Justice ...

Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has attracted about 200,000 investors to apply for the retail portion of its Hong Kong share sale, Hong Kong Economic Times reported, citing unidentified sources. It would make Alibaba the most popular listing of the year by the number of subscribers, the paper said, while adding that the number of retail buyers is less than ...

Bloomberg Walmart Inc’s Jet subsidiary is ending its fresh-food delivery business just a year after introducing the service in New York City, another sign that the urban-focussed site is scaling back. The retailer will close a warehouse in the Bronx it was using to prepare orders and also let some drivers go, resulting in the loss of between 200 and ...

ABU DHABI / WAM Under the framework of the UAE’s efforts to support the Yemeni people, the country has contributed AED367 million, equivalent to $100 million, to the United Nations Humanitarian Response Plan in Yemen 2019, bringing the total aid contributed by the UAE to over AED22 billion. Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashemy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, signed ...

Dubai / Emirates Business Alpen Capital Limited, Dubai-headquartered investment banking advisory firm, announced the publication of its latest report on the GCC Insurance Industry for the year 2019. The report provides a comprehensive overview of the GCC insurance sector and outlines the recent trends, growth drivers and challenges in the sector. It also profiles some of the prominent insurance companies ...