Bloomberg Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. said efforts to revamp its research operations will cost 75 billion yen ($725 million) as it seeks to build a new pipeline of drugs and considers closing some R&D operations in the U.K. The Japanese company’s R&D activities will be concentrated in Japan and in the U.S., it said in a statement Friday. The number …

  Bloomberg ICICI Bank Ltd., India’s largest private sector lender by assets, posted a 25 percent drop in first-quarter profit as provisions for bad debt rose. Net income fell to 22.3 billion rupees ($333 million), or 3.83 rupees a share, in the three months ended June 30, from 29.8 billion rupees, or 5.09 rupees, a year earlier, the Mumbai-based lender …

  Beijing / AFP Dozens of civilians left the besieged and battered opposition-held east of Syria’s Aleppo city on Saturday through a “humanitarian corridor” to the government-held west, state media reported. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that “a number” of civilians had crossed into government territory. The crossings were the first major movement of people from …