News

  NEW DELHI / AFP Indian business leaders on Thursday hailed the passage of a landmark tax reform bill that paves the way for a new national sales tax and the creation of a common market across the country for the first time. Lawmakers voted late on Wednesday in favour of introducing the long-awaited Goods and Services Tax (GST), which ...

  Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. reported Thursday a 14.5 percent drop in profit for the fiscal first quarter as sales fell and a strong yen slashed earnings for the Japanese automaker. Two powerful quakes in southwestern Kumamoto in April that had disrupted production also hurt results. Toyota’s April-June profit totaled 552.4 billion yen ($5.4 billion), down from 646.3 billion yen ...

  Bloomberg India’s biggest electricity producer plans to fuel a proposed power project on the country’s southern coast with domestic coal, switching from its original plan to use overseas supplies equivalent to almost 9 percent of this year’s forecast imports. The state-owned company NTPC Ltd. made the decision after the federal power ministry and the state government of Andhra Pradesh, ...

  BLOOMBERG South Korea’s Hollys Coffee, which popularized 430-calorie sweet potato lattes as an unusual alternative in the caffeine-addicted country, has started looking for a new owner. Buyout firm IMM Private Equity Inc. has kicked off an auction of its controlling stake in the homegrown cafe chain, which it is seeking to sell for as much as $300 million, according ...

  AFP A string of overseas investments has shone a new spotlight on Chinese conglomerate Fosun, after the mysterious disappearance — and re-emergence — of its tycoon chairman rattled investors. In the space of three days last week, the Shanghai-based company bought a stake in an Indian drugmaker for $1.26 billion, acquired a Brazilian investment firm and announced plans to ...

  Berlin / AFP German industrial giant Siemens lifted its annual earnings forecast on Thursday after booming demand for renewables fattened order books in the second quarter, but warned of increasing geopolitical risks. For the financial year ending September, the group said it expected profits per share between 6.50 and 6.70 euros ($7.24-7.46), compared with the 6.0 to 6.40 it ...

  Bloomberg Serco Group Plc shares surged to a 14-month high after the U.K. government-services contractor raised its profit target for a second time this year following quicker-than-expected cost savings and the pound’s plunge. Serco rose as much as 16 percent to 138 pence, the highest intraday price since June 3, 2015, and was up 14 percent at 12:18 p.m. ...

  The Hague / AFP Inflation in The Netherlands dipped into negative territory in July for the first time in nearly three decades, slipping to -0.30 percent, according to official statistics published on Thursday. “The last time that inflation was below zero was in December 1987,” the Central Statistics Office said. The news came after three months of stagnation when ...

  Brussels / AFP The European Union on Thursday hit China and Russia with anti-dumping duties on cold rolled steel imports after complaints by EU producers they were being forced out of the market. The European Commission said the levies, announced provisionally in February, will run for five years as Europe tries to cope with a global steel glut largely ...

  Brighton / AFP The world’s tallest moving observation tower, the i360, opens to the public on Thursday, a futuristic landmark that has transformed the historic seafront in the English tourist resort of Brighton. A 162-metre (530-foot) high steel tower is ringed by a doughnut-shaped glass observation pod that gently glides up and down. The design is meant to be ...