Reuters A group of independent Chinese oil refiners is clubbing together to survive an onslaught by state-owned giants and the rise of private chemical giants, but industry analysts said the new alliance may find it hard to stick. Less than two years after becoming some of China’s newest crude oil importers, around 20 independent plants in the eastern industrial heartland ...

Bloomberg Terry Gou, the billionaire behind Apple Inc.’s iPhone factories, is pressing his case to acquire Toshiba Corp.’s memory chips business for $19.5 billion in a last-ditch effort to beat out two American buyout firms in the tumultuous auction. Gou’s Foxconn Technology Group has broad support for its offer from Apple, SoftBank Group Corp. and Sharp Corp. and is ready ...

Bloomberg China’s bond market may be the world’s third largest, but when it comes to luring foreign investors, Beijing has a long road ahead. Norges Bank Investment Management, steward of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, proposed last week to limit its benchmark index for bond holdings to just three currencies — dollar, euro and sterling. The role of its ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. is getting ready to return to overseas debt markets for the second time in two months after issuing $4.5 billion in dollar-denominated subordinated notes in July. Headed by billionaire Masayoshi Son, SoftBank is accelerating deal-making around the world, and has been in discussions to combine its US wireless operator Sprint Corp. with a potential partner. The ...

Bloomberg Mark Mobius has given his blessing to a new venue that would permit dual-class shares. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd.’s plan that would allow dual-class companies to list at a bourse away from the city’s main exchange “is probably the answer,” said Mobius, executive chairman at Templeton Emerging Markets Group. “People can make a choice, if they don’t ...

Bloomberg Hurricane Irma smashed into Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm, driving a wall of water and violent winds ashore and marking the first time since 1964 the U.S. was hit by back-to-back major hurricanes. The eye of the storm moved over the lower Florida Keys at about 9 a.m. on Sunday with top winds of 130 miles (209 ...

Bloomberg You don’t need to tell UK nurses what this week’s inflation and wage data will show. They say their living standards have been squeezed for seven years, and now it’s reached crisis point. With reports from the Office for National Statistics set to show pay continuing to lag price growth in Britain, nurses are just the latest group of ...

Bloomberg The state of Ohio’s lawsuit against opioid maker Purdue Pharma should be thrown out because it runs afoul of federal drug regulations and doesn’t show the company’s Oxycontin painkiller marketing caused specific harm, according to a court filing. Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue filed its response in state court in Ohio to Attorney General Mike DeWine’s May suit, accusing the pharmaceutical ...

KIEV / Reuters Ukraine might lose its second largest wheat export market, Egypt, due to new wheat import requirements that favour rival Russia, Ukraine’s acting agriculture minister said. Ukraine exported around 2.5 million tonnes of wheat to Egypt in the 2016/17 season, or about 14 percent of the country’s total wheat exports of 17.5 million tonnes, according to consultancy UkrAgroConsult. ...

Bloomberg Equifax Inc.’s insurance against cyber breaches is likely inadequate to cover the credit-reporting company’s costs tied to one of the biggest hacks in history, according to people familiar with the coverage. The company holds a policy that would probably cover about $100 million to $150 million, with costs shared by carriers in the London market and elsewhere, said the ...