News

Bloomberg The New York investor Robert Mercer, whose hedge fund avoided an estimated $6 billion in taxes through trades the Internal Revenue Service is challenging, has been funding a group that’s paying for an unrelated Tea Party lawsuit against the tax agency. Mercer’s family foundation gave $500,000 in 2014 to a group called Citizens for Self Governance, according to a ...

WASHINGTON / AFP The United States and Cuba will sign a bilateral agreement authorising up to 110 scheduled daily commercial flights to Havana and nine other destinations on the communist island. The deal restores regular flights between the two countries for the first time in more than half a century. Once the accord is signed, US authorities will immediately invite ...

Rio De Janeiro/BLOOMBERG The Brazilian real became more volatile as the government tries to push Congress to pass a proposed tax increases to avoid other levies that could further weigh on economic growth. One-week implied volatility surged 0.6 percentage point to 19.24 percent, the second-highest among the world’s 16 most- traded currencies. The real slumped 0.2 percent to 4.0059 per ...

Washington / AFP Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro named a new head of his economic team just five weeks after he had handed the job to a widely criticized professor who blamed the world’s fastest inflation on the country’s “parasitic” business class. Luis Salas, who had held the post as economy vice president since Jan. 6, is leaving for family reasons, ...

BROOKLYN / Bloomberg Vornado Realty Trust, one of the biggest owners of Manhattan office towers, and Silverstein Properties Inc. are among potential bidders for real estate offered by the Jehovah’s Witnesses in an area of Brooklyn that’s in high demand by developers. The companies have expressed interest in at least one of three properties for sale, including the Brooklyn Heights ...

Cairo / Emirates Business JLL, the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firm, on Tuesday released its 2015 annual review of the Cairo Real Estate Market, assessing the latest trends in the office, residential, retail and hotel sectors. The report notes that Cairo real estate market has witnessed mixed performance across various segments in 2015 which was impacted by ...

Vienna / Bloomberg Vienna’s Hotel Imperial, used by stars including Madonna and Mick Jagger as well as politicians and diplomats, was bought by Dubai’s Al Habtoor Group LLC for US$78.8 million. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. sold the 138-room property, which will continue to operate under its Luxury Collection brand, the Stamford, Connecticut-based company said in a statement on ...

Bloomberg What do Israeli investors know about retirement homes in Indiana? Enough to lend them 265 millionshekels. Strawberry Fields, a real estate investment trust whose facilities cater to Alzheimer’s sufferers in the Midwest, is the latest of at least 14 U.S. property companies that have borrowed a combined 8.1 billion shekels ($2.07 billion) in the Israeli market since 2008, securing ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp., the maker of Japan’s first passenger jet, and propeller-plane maker ATR announced orders from lessors at the Singapore Airshow amid concern that a two-year, multi-billion-dollar order spree could soon start losing steam. Mitsubishi Aircraft signed a letter of intent with US lessor Aerolease Aviation LLC for 10 planes on a firm basis, with an ...

Paris / AFP Airbus Group SE said it’s raising its tally for last year, taking its total backlog of aircraft orders to $1 trillion Airbus revised upwards its 2015 net aircraft order book on Tuesday after it received orders very late in December. Including the 44 last-minute orders, Airbus’s book for 2015 now stands at 1,080 aircraft orders, worth $141.6 ...