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DUBAI / Reuters The Saudi stock index may rise as crude oil prices held near a six-month high, while other Gulf markets more susceptible to foreign flows may follow the downtrend in Asian shares. Brent was trading at $56.80 a barrel in Asia, staying near a March high struck on Friday. Petrochemical makers, that account for roughly one-quarter of Saudi ...

Bloomberg When the who’s who of the oil trading industry gathered in Singapore last year for the annual Asia Pacific Petroleum Conference (APPEC), the talk was about a painful year ahead. Of the dozen or so senior oil traders canvassed, all but one expected prices to be capped at about $50 a barrel. A year later, the sentiment has turned ...

Bloomberg Unilever agreed to buy a South Korean cosmetics maker for $2.7 billion to gain a stronger foothold in the world’s fourth-largest skincare market, betting that the pop-culture-fuelled appeal of the country’s beauty products will outweigh concerns over tensions. Unilever will buy Carver Korea, maker of AHC skincare products, from shareholders including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bain Capital Private ...

Bloomberg Tata Motors Ltd., the owner of luxury car brands Jaguar Land Rover, is building a war chest that will allow it to expand its business and acquire rivals. Cash and equivalents at the Indian maker of the Tiago and Hexa cars surged 87 percent to 397.6 billion rupees ($6.2 billion) as of June 30 from a year earlier, according ...

Bloomberg After decades of relentless gains, China’s share of global exports is now edging down. Whether that continues hinges a lot on how fast it can shift into higher-technology shipments. China’s portion of the global export pie has shrunk from a high of almost 17 percent reached in December 2015, International Monetary Fund data show. The pullback is driven mainly ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc.’s latest products are getting a thumbs down, at least by investors in the company’s Asian suppliers. Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which assembles the iPhone and other Apple devices, has fallen 10 percent in Taipei since Apple unveiled its collection of new gadgets for the holidays this month. Other suppliers across the region, including Taiwan’s Pegatron Corp. ...

­­­­­­­­­­­Bloomberg Swiss engineering company ABB Ltd. agreed to buy General Electric Co.’s industrial solutions business for $2.6 billion to strengthen its foothold in the US, the world’s biggest market for electrification products like circuit breakers and switchgears. ABB will incur costs of $400 million over five years to integrate GE’s industrial solutions unit, Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Spiesshofer told journalists ...

Bloomberg Silicon Valley spent more than a decade finding ways to give company founders more control. When Facebook Inc. tried to follow suit, shareholders pushed back. Google started it with a 2004 initial public offering that gave co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin voting rights well beyond their economic stakes in the search giant. Groupon Inc., Zynga Inc. and Facebook ...

Bloomberg As new Nestle SA Chief Executive Officer Mark Schneider prepares to lay out his strategic vision for the Swiss food giant, his plans will be overshadowed by a changing of the guard at another European consumer-goods giant—L’Oreal SA of France. Nestle owns 23 percent of the French cosmetics maker, and the death of heiress Liliane Bettencourt raises questions about ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc. has generated nearly $1 billion in revenue the last five years from an unlikely source: Rival automakers. Needless to say, the other companies aren’t happy. California requires that automakers sell electric and other non-polluting vehicles in proportion to their market share. If the manufacturers don’t sell enough of them, they have to purchase credits from competitors to ...