International News

Hong Kong / AFP Shares in Chinese telecoms giant ZTE plunged 16 percent on Thursday as it resumed trading after the US announced a probe over alleged violations of trade sanctions against Iran, which the firm admitted could lead to civil and criminal liabilities. Washington slapped restrictions on ZTE and three linked companies last month after an investigation alleged the ...

Kathmandu / DPA International air passenger traffic through Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) dropped for the first time in 13 years as travellers stayed away due to the April earthquake last year and a jet fuel shortage caused by an Indian trade embargo. According to TIA, the number of travellers passing through the country’s sole international airport plunged 8.37 per cent ...

Bloomberg Dutch voters rejected a treaty between the European Union and Ukraine by a resounding margin, in a referendum that exposed the extent of anti-EU sentiment in one of the bloc’s founding members. British campaigners to leave the bloc hailed the news from the Netherlands, as did the leader of France’s anti-EU National Front, Marine Le Pen, and Russian Prime ...

Bloomberg London’s role as the world’s hub for foreign-exchange trading would be weakened if U.K. voters opt to leave the European Union in June, with Frankfurt benefiting the most, according to a poll of currency traders and market professionals. Some two-thirds of respondents said a Brexit — a British exit — would weaken the City of London’s dominant position in ...

Bloomberg Governor Elvira Nabiullina said a stable and improving inflation outlook will enable the Bank of Russia to embark on steeper monetary easing without putting financial stability at risk. Keeping interest rates on hold for a prolonged period is winning trust that inflation will continue to ease, Nabiullina said at a banking congress in Moscow on Thursday. Even so, she ...

Bloomberg European lawmakers agreed to delay the overhaul of Europe-wide market-rules known as MiFID II by a year in a vote on Thursday in Brussels. The European Parliament adopted the European Commission’s proposal to postpone the start date for MiFID II, the complex law that affects nearly every financial firm operating in the 28-nation bloc, by a year to 2018 ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank called on its counterpart in Hungary to review several of its programs ranging from education to art and real estate on concern they may violate a prohibition on monetary financing. The activities under scrutiny include a network of foundations the Hungarian central bank created last year, the regulator’s acquisition of the Budapest Stock Exchange as ...

Bloomberg The more than $30 billion of buyouts among companies at the heart of global financial markets have in the past six months turned little-known data firms into some of the industry’s hottest takeover targets. Deutsche Boerse’s $13.8 billion proposed buyout of London Stock Exchange Group Plc would be among the biggest in the industry’s history, sweeping into play information-service ...

Bloomberg Improving gender equality would add at least $2.1 trillion to U.S. gross domestic product by 2025, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study, a boost roughly the size of the Texas economy. “We were surprised that there was such a large economic opportunity still at stake” because the U.S. is a relative leader in gender parity, said Kweilin Ellingrud, ...

Bloomberg Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has designated every Friday in the months of April and May as a non-working holiday, in a bid to save electricity as a prolonged drought pushes water levels to a critical threshold at hydro-generation plants. The country will unveil details of a 60-day plan to conserve energy, Maduro said, adding that measures would include asking ...