News

  Bloomberg As Greece attempts to clear another hurdle on the road to passing the next bailout review, the bond market is already delivering a positive verdict. The country’s 10-year sovereign bonds had their best week since August, pushing the yield on the securities to the lowest this year. More austerity is in the cards as the government drafts legislation ...

  Germany / AFP German auto giant Volkswagen announced it is giving its staff a €3,950 bonus for 2015, despite suffering huge losses due to an emissions-cheating scandal which sent shockwaves through the industry. The pre-tax premium — less than the €5,900 handed out for 2014 — comes after VW also revealed huge bonuses for top executives last month, sparking ...

  Caracas, Venezuela / AFP Embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared a three-month state of emergency late Friday to face “threats from abroad,” as his emboldened opposition geared for a vote to oust him from office. In an address to the nation, Maduro said he had signed a new state of emergency decree “to neutralize and defeat foreign aggression,” which he ...

  Bloomberg Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett is backing a group bidding for Yahoo! Inc.’s Internet assets, people familiar with the matter said. The consortium, which includes Quicken Loans Inc. founder Dan Gilbert, is in the second round of bidding for Yahoo’s assets, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the bidding process is private. Buffett ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s real joined a selloff in global currencies against the dollar as newly appointed Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles refrained from giving details on how to tackle the nation’s ballooning fiscal deficit. The real erased its gain for the week as the U.S. currency climbed after retail data re-ignited speculation the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates this year, ...

  Buenos Aires, Argentina / AFP Assets belonging to former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner were frozen after she was charged with damaging national finances by manipulating the Central Bank’s exchange operations during her last months in office. Federal Judge Claudio Bonadio said it was “evident that the then president gave instructions — which without a doubt were developed jointly — to ...

  Guatemala City, Guatemala / AFP Business chiefs from across Central America made a joint plea to the region’s political leaders to ratify a WTO agreement aimed at reducing poor infrastructure and other barriers to trade. “There is consensus in the Central American private sector that the governments of the region urgently need to take action so all Central American countries ...

  Bloomberg Tesla Motors Inc., the electric-car maker run by billionaire Elon Musk, hired Audi AG’s Peter Hochholdinger to help oversee production as it seeks to boost vehicle output about 10-fold by 2018. Hochholdinger will be vice president of vehicle production, Tesla said. He’ll be expected to boost production of Model S and Model X cars while building a manufacturing ...

  ABU DHABi / WAM The United Arab Emirates condemned, in the strongest terms, the terrorist massacres in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, which claimed the lives of dozens of innocent people. The UAE has announced its solidarity with Iraq and its people against organised terrorist attacks, targeting its institutions and its religious, cultural and civilisational fabric. The Ministry of Foreign ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The Ministry of Economy issued a report on monitoring, following-up and analysis of the development of the UAE’s Foreign Trade for the first quarter of 2016. The report, which was prepared by the Trade Policy Department at the Ministry, includes a number of important themes that together constitute the components and key elements of the report, ...