Sydney / AFP Australian banking giant Westpac posted a seven percent slide in annual net profit on Monday on the back of market headwinds and impairment charges but said it was well positioned with a strong balance sheet. Westpac’s Aus$7.45 billion (US$5.72 billion) result in the year to September 30 rounded out annual reporting from three of the nation’s …

  TOKYO / AP Japanese telecommunications and internet company SoftBank Group Corp., which has acquired British chipmaker ARM Holdings for about $30 billion, reported on Monday that its July-September profit more than doubled from the same period the previous year. Tokyo-based Softbank’s fiscal second quarter profit totaled 528.6 billion yen ($5.1 billion), up from 258.6 billion yen last year, boosted …

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, seeking to shore up capital, has said it wants to sell or spin off German retail-banking unit Postbank. Standing in the way: bonds known as CoCos. Blame it on conflicting accounting rules. While Deutsche Bank has taken a multi-billion-euro writedown for Postbank in accounts based on international standards, it hasn’t done so on its income …