Bloomberg Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic drew a parallel from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, causing an uproar across the Balkans. “Who annexed Kosovo? The international community, including us,” Milanovic said Monday in a speech in the Croatian town of Petrinja, where he spoke about the war in Ukraine. “Kosovo was taken from Serbia by force, …

  Bloomberg Europe could boost bank lending by as much as €4.5 trillion ($4.9 trillion) by lightening the industry’s regulatory burden, according to a study commissioned by the region’s banking lobby. That increase of almost 30% would stem from bringing demands for European banks’ capital reserves and related costs more in line with those of US competitors, consultant Oliver Wyman …

Bloomberg UBS Group AG’s investment bank underperformed US peers in the fourth quarter, as equities revenue slumped and the Swiss firm failed to match gains in fixed-income trading. Revenue at the equities division — about twice the size of the debt and forex business — fell about 20% to $883 million, compared with declines of about half that on Wall …