International News

  London / AFP French oil and gas company Total officially launched a project off Britain’s remote Shetland Islands on Monday, hailed by London as a “vote of confidence” in the flagging Scottish North Sea oil and gas industry. The Laggan-Tormore fields are located 600 metres (1,970 feet) under water off Britain’s northernmost outpost. They began production on February 7 ...

  Bloomberg Royal Philips NV is seeking to raise as much as €970 million ($1.1 billion) from the initial public offering of a 25 percent stake in its lighting unit in Amsterdam after a private sale process didn’t result in a deal. Philips is planning to sell 37.5 million shares at a range of between €18.50 and €22.50 per share, ...

  Bloomberg Russian assets, which are among the most volatile in the world, are bringing hedge fund managers the best returns in emerging markets. Funds with a geographical focus on the country have gained an average 29 percent since the start of 2015, more than any others geared toward major developing nations, according to industry tracker eVestment. That’s 8 times ...

  Bloomberg Oil climbed to a six-month high as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the market moved into a deficit earlier than expected due to disruptions in Nigeria and higher demand. Futures rose as much as 2.1 percent in New York. The shift to a supply deficit this month happened one quarter earlier than forecast, Goldman Sachs said in a ...

  Bloomberg Konecranes Oyj shares soared after the crane maker agreed to buy a lifting-gear business from Terex Corp. for about $1.3 billion, abandoning a full merger plan and paving the way for China’s Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co. to buy the rest of the U.S. company. Konecranes will pay $820 million in cash and 19.6 million shares ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s state-controlled oil company Petrobras is advancing asset sales to reduce the biggest debt load in the oil industry after three quarters of straight losses. Brazil’s deepest recession in a century is curbing lucrative fuel imports and eroding profit at Rio de Janeiro-based Petroleo Brasileiro SA. The company’s net loss was 1.25 billion reais ($360 million), or 10 ...

  Bloomberg Safra Catz emerged as the highest-paid U.S. female executive in fiscal 2015 when she became co-chief executive officer of Oracle Corp. Catz was awarded a $56.9 million pay package last year, placing her first among women on the Bloomberg Pay Index, a ranking of the 200 best-paid executives at companies that trade on U.S. exchanges. Her pay included ...

  LONDON / AP Ex-London Mayor Boris Johnson has compared the European Union’s aims to those of Adolf Hitler, arguing that the 28-nation bloc is creating a superstate that mirrors the attempt of the Nazi leader to dominate the European continent. Johnson, the most prominent political figure arguing that Britain should leave the EU, says the past 2,000 years of ...

  Rome / AFP Italy’s health minister is proposing doubling a ‘baby bonus’ incentive for couples to have more children to combat what she calls a catastrophic decline in the country’s birth rate. “If we carry on as we are and fail to reverse the trend, there will be fewer than 350,000 births a year in 10 years’ time, 40 ...

  Athens / AFP Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said that Greece will return to the bond markets in 2017, seven years after losing access to the markets due to its debt crisis. “We will return to the markets in 2017,” Tsipras said in an interview with the Realnews weekly newspaper. While the eurozone country has continued to raise funds through short-term, ...