Retail

  Singapore / Bloomberg Empty storefronts in Singapore’s prime shopping district may become a more common sight. Vacancies in the city’s main Orchard Road area, a magnet for tourists lured by malls and Japanese department stores such as Takashimaya, have risen to a five-year high and across the island, they’ve soared to the highest since 2009. As economies around the ...

  New Delhi / Bloomberg India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board has ruled Apple Inc. must comply with local sourcing rules to sell products through its own retail stores, according to people with direct knowledge of matter, a setback to the iPhone maker’s plans to open retail outlets in the country. The FIPB has cleared Apple’s application to open retail stores ...

  Mumbai / Bloomberg The Indian operators of Domino’s Pizza Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. dropped after a local research agency said that burger and pizza bread sold at the fast-food outlets contained cancer-causing chemicals. Jubilant Foodworks Ltd., a licensee of Domino’s, headed for a three-month low, while WestLife Development Ltd., which runs McDonald’s restaurants in western and southern India, slid ...

  Bloomberg Shoprite Holdings Ltd. plans to invest $572 million on new supermarkets and business units in Angola, as Africa’s largest food retailer expands in fast-growing sub-Saharan markets. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has appointed a commission to negotiate potential tax breaks and other incentives for the Cape Town-based company, according to a May 18 statement published in the government ...

  New York / AP Sports Authority, which filed for bankruptcy protection three months ago, is shuttering all 460 of its stores after it was unable to adapt to consumers’ move online. The sports retailer had originally only planned to close about 140 stores, but in a court document this week it outlined plans to shutter all of them. The Englewood, ...

  New York / AFP Wal-Mart and some smaller retailers surged following strong quarterly results, while the broader US market retreated on worries about higher interest rates. Wal-Mart Stores jumped 9.6 percent after reporting better-than-expected first-quarter earnings. Sports apparel and equipment chain Dick’s Sporting Goods and youth-oriented apparel chain Urban Outfitters soared 8.6 percent and 14.0 percent following earnings. The results ...

  New York / AFP Retail group Gap Inc. said it would shutter 75 stores this year amid sagging sales, including 53 of its kids-focused Old Navy brand outlets in Japan. Announcing a fall in first quarter earnings, the San Francisco-based retailer also warned that it might not achieve previous earnings forecasts for this year given the headwinds buffeting the apparel ...

  London / AFP British retail sales jumped by 1.3 percent in April from a month earlier, official figures showed on Thursday, handing a boost to the economy following a string of weak data. Sales by volume shot higher last month compared with a drop of 0.5 percent in March, the Office for National Statistics said in a statement. March’s ...

  Washington / Bloomberg General Electric Co.’s top executive sees power generation and renewable energy buoying profits as the industrial giant struggles with persistent challenges in the oil and gas market. The non-petroleum energy units could boost sales by at least 10 percent this year as the company sees “strong” order prospects for equipment and services, Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey ...

  London / Bloomberg Burberry Group Plc unveiled a multi-year turnaround plan based on a narrower product range, its biggest cost purge in years and a sharper focus on bags and online sales, after lowering profit expectations for the second time in a month. Earnings for the year ending in March are likely to be near the bottom of the ...