Bloomberg The allure of India’s consumer stocks is getting stronger. Jefferies India Pvt. joins a growing chorus of bulls on the producers of staples and branded goods. Its picks in the sector include V-Mart Retail Ltd., whose stock-market performance has made the company the world’s best-performing department stores chain this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares of V-Mart, ...

Bloomberg Anglo American Plc’s biggest shareholder, billionaire Anil Agarwal, has offered to help the mining giant expand into India. “That’s a big market for them,” Agarwal said in an interview in Lusaka. “I am going to help them if they need to open up that market for them to work there.” The mining tycoon wasn’t explicit about whether he wanted ...

Bloomberg China’s southernmost province of Hainan is getting a package of favourable policies covering tourism, duty-free shopping and medical services that’s designed to help transform the island into an international tourism destination. Hainan, often billed as China’s Hawaii, will become a “free trade port,” China National Radio reported. The upgraded status is an economic distinction that’s aimed to help boost ...

Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s trucks chief wants to take his division to “the next level,” with the German manufacturer considering a stock listing that would catapult the $37-billion unit into the blue chip ranks of Europe’s largest economy. “An initial public offering is just one of the options, another is that we could issue our own bonds,” Andreas Renschler, who oversees ...

NEW YORK / Reuters General Electric Co said it took a $4.24 billion equity charge and reduced earnings for the last two years by 30 cents a share, figures in line with expectations the company set earlier this year when it said it would comply with new accounting standards. The maker of power plants, jet engines, medical devices and other ...

Bloomberg Walt Disney Co. must make an offer for Sky Plc if its $52.4 billion purchase of most of 21st Century Fox Inc. succeeds, the UK Takeover Panel ruled. Disney would have to bid 10.75 pounds per Sky share upon completing the acquisition of Fox assets, which include an existing 39 percent in Sky, and if Fox or Comcast Corp. ...

Reuters Saga Plc, an over-50s travel and insurance company, reported a small rise in full-year pretax profit after its tour operations were hit by the collapse of Monarch Airlines, but said its travel business had “excellent” visibility this year. Saga, which offers ocean and river cruises, singles holidays and escorted tours, said underlying pretax profit rose to 190.1 million pounds ...

Reuters French food services and facilities management group Sodexo reported a well-flagged fall in first-half core operating profit and kept its recently reduced targets for sales growth and margins for the 2017/18 full year. Sodexo, which is the world’s second-biggest catering company after Compass Group, struck a cautious tone over its medium-term goals although Chief Executive Denis Machuel said he ...

London / Reuters GlaxoSmithKline is divesting its rare disease gene therapy drugs to private biotech company Orchard Therapeutics as Chief Executive Emma Walmsley makes good on her promise to prune the drugmaker’s pharmaceuticals portfolio. Financially, the transaction will not move the dial for Britain’s biggest drugmaker, but it offers a sign that Walmsley is making progress in reshaping the company ...

The Congressional Budget Office last week released its annual budget and economic outlook report, and although the news was gruesome, the report was greeted in Washington with a giant yawn. The assumption among Republicans and Democrats is that the political rewards for curbing runaway budget deficits are too meager to justify the risks. There’s a consensus to do nothing — ...