International News

  Brussels/ AFP Belgium announced on Thursday a breakthrough in talks to secure a landmark EU-Canada trade deal by winning over the leaders of a recalcitrant Belgian region, potentially snapping a deadlock which threatened European credibility anew. However, the announcement came too late for EU leaders and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to go ahead with a signing ceremony in ...

  Helsinki / AFP Finnish telecom equipment giant Nokia said on Thursday it has managed to reduce losses but remained in the red in the third quarter after acquiring its former rival, French-American Alcatel-Lucent. The world’s former number one in handsets, which turned into a telecom equipment maker, reported a net loss of 125 million euros ($135 million) in the ...

  Berlin / AFP German auto giant Volkswagen on Thursday lifted its forecast for the year after swinging back to profit, but the fallout from the group’s “dieselgate” emissions cheating scandal weighed heavily on its luxury brand Audi. One year on from the crisis, the VW group’s recovery appeared on track as it posted net profit of 2.3 billion euros ...

  AFP Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported an expected 30 percent profit plunge on the back of a highly damaging recall crisis that hammered the reputation of the world’s largest smartphone maker. The third quarter earnings were announced just hours before the start of an annual shareholder meeting which was set to approve the latest step in a complex generational ...

  Bloomberg Stresses among Singapore’s oil and gas companies are deepening, the head of Southeast Asia’s second-largest lender said, signaling that more firms grappling with the slump in energy prices may face difficulties repaying their debts. “I don’t think the oil and gas sector is in a situation where it is in a recovery mode yet, and continues to be ...

  Bloomberg Profits of China’s industrial corporations are holding up this year thanks to a boost from steel and refining, even as last month’s earnings slowed from a three-year high. Industrial profits in January-September rose 8.4 percent from a year earlier to 4.64 trillion yuan ($685 billion), the National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. Earnings last month rose 7.7 percent ...

  Bloomberg New Zealand has overtaken Singapore as the best country in the world to do business, according to the World Bank. Singapore slipped to second in the bank’s 2017 “ Doing Business” report after topping the ranking for a decade. Finland dropped out of the top 10, falling to 13th. Macedonia, which placed 92nd a decade ago, improved two ...

  Bloomberg Nintendo Co.’s plan to get its business back on track with mobile games and a new console is coming up against a hard reality: the core business is getting weaker. Pokemon Go, which gave investors and customers an early indication of the company’s potential to carve out a significant share of the smartphone gaming market, delivered a 12 ...

  Bloomberg Ousted Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry accused directors at India’s largest conglomerate of wrongfully dismissing him and warned that the tea-to-software giant may face 1.18 trillion rupees ($18 billion) in writedowns because of five unprofitable businesses he inherited. Mistry, who had been Tata’s chairman for almost four years, was abruptly removed from his role on Monday for non ...

  Bloomberg Posco, South Korea’s largest steelmaker, posted the largest quarterly profit since 2013 as a property and infrastructure boom in China boosts global prices, lifting earnings at Asian mills. Net income, excluding minority interests, was 539.3 billion won ($476 million) in the three months through September, after a 550 billion won loss a year earlier, the Pohang-based company said ...