It’s a Christmas fairy tale. After a 30-year sleep, during which costs have run out of control, investment banks have suddenly woken up to the fact that thousands of their customers don’t make them money. Cursing the ogres of Basel, they find a magic marker pen and cross the freeloaders off their client lists. It all ends happily ever …

  It’s not looking pretty for department stores. Other than electronics retailers and gas stations, department stores are the only major retail category in the US in which sales fell in the 11 months through November from a year earlier, according to US Census data released this week. And while most of the conversation about dying department stores centers on …

  Berlin / AFP Germany was hunting for possible accomplices of the suspected Berlin truck attacker on Saturday, a day after he was killed in a shoot-out with Italian police in Milan. As most of the country readied to celebrate Christmas Eve, Germany’s under-pressure authorities said hundreds of investigators would be working on the probe throughout the holiday season. Tunisian …