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  Beijing / Bloomberg China’s biggest bank ICBC on Thursday announced mounting problem loans, after International Monetary Fund staff argued that the world’s second-biggest economy needs a more “comprehensive” plan to tackle bad debts The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), believed to be the world’s largest bank by assets, said its non-performing loan ratio rose to 1.66 percent ...

  Tokyo / AFP All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL) announced robust annual profits on Thursday, thanks to healthy demand on China and other international routes as well as falling fuel costs. Japan’s top carriers benefitted from a record number of foreigners visiting Japan with mainland Chinese being among the most conspicuous as they flock to Japan for shopping ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal said on Thursday its annual profit dived by a third as it pointed to a “severely depressed” market owing to a slowdown in China and other overseas markets. The Tokyo-based firm, one of the world’s biggest steelmakers, posted a net profit of 145.4 billion yen in its fiscal year to March, ...

  New Delhi / Bloomberg Coffee production in India is set to tumble to a 19-year low as dry weather wilts plantations in Asia’s third-largest grower. Output will decline at least 30 percent in the harvesting season starting from Oct. 1, compared with a record 350,000 tons a year earlier, according to Nishant Gurjer, a member and past chairman of ...

  Bloomberg German joblessness extended its decline, underscoring the strength of the labour market as Europe’s largest economy seeks to absorb a wave of refugees. The number of people out of work fell by a seasonally adjusted 16,000 to 2.706 million in April, data from the Federal Labour Agency in Nuremberg showed on Thursday. That’s the seventh consecutive drop, and ...

  Bloomberg U.K. farm income tumbled by 29 percent last year as the country’s growers were hit by falling crop prices and lower subsidy payments, the government said. Total income dropped to 3.77 billion pounds ($5.5 billion) in 2015, the lowest in eight years, according to a report from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. It was the ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG’s namesake car brand slumped to a loss in the fourth quarter as the emissions-cheating scandal tarnished its reputation and added costs to appease customers and dealers. The VW brand posted a loss of €127 million euros in the final three months of 2015, compared with a profit of €780 million a year earlier, according to data ...

  Bloomberg Brexit campaigners sought to seize back the initiative in the referendum battle as eight high-profile economists declared Britain would do better outside the European Union. Analysis published by the Treasury on the consequences of leaving the EU is a “misleading piece of propaganda,” according to the group, which includes Patrick Minford, a professor at Cardiff University, Gerard Lyons, ...

  Bloomberg Tata Steel Ltd. said that while it has no fixed deadline to sell its ailing U.K. steel operations, it must act quickly to stem losses. “Urgency is important,” Bimlendra Jha, chief executive officer of the company’s U.K. business, told a committee of U.K. lawmakers on Thursday. “We cannot continue to bleed.” Tata Steel said last month that it ...

  Bloomberg Exxon Mobil Corp., Dow Chemical Co. and OMV AG lost a court challenge to a European Union decision to cut the number of free emission permits they receive under the region’s carbon market, the bloc’s highest court ruled on Thursday. But the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg delayed the implementation of its ruling by 10 months so ...