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Never mind Brexit, plucky UK shoppers keep spending

Brexit is driving up prices and there’s an election around the corner, but Britons are still hitting the shops, to judge by a raft of reports from retailers. Marks & Spencer Group Plc said that while its same-store clothing and home-furnishing sales fell more than estimated in the three months through April 1, full-price sales were up, and there are ...

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The boosterism behind China’s Silk Road story

Sitting in my Hangzhou hotel room one evening last September, I caught a helpfully subtitled Chinese TV show about Song Dynasty inscriptions carved on a mountainside near Quanzhou — the city Chinese media invariably call “the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road.” With prayers for good winds and safe returns, the carvings bore witness to China’s far-flung commercial relations ...

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Bank of Montreal braces for loan losses as US growth ebbs

Bloomberg Bank of Montreal’s US push hit a speed bump in the second quarter as higher loan losses eroded earnings from its Chicago-based BMO Harris Bank. The lender set aside C$259 million ($192 million) for soured loans, up 29 percent from a year earlier and the highest since at least 2011, tied largely to U.S. personal and commercial banking and ...

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