AFP Leading Australian publisher Fairfax Media said it would post nearly Aus$1 billion in writedowns in the year to July, while it announced the creation of a new reporting segment for its lucrative online real estate division. Like its global peers, the group, which owns The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, has had add to slash jobs …

  Bloomberg Tokyo Gas Co., Japan’s second-biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas, is in talks with European companies to swap cargoes it owns from the U.S. with those in Asia to reduce shipping times and costs. The utility is offering cargoes from the Cove Point project on the U.S. East Coast, which is expected to start up late next year …

  Bloomberg Corporate earnings are heading for a fifth straight quarter of declines, dragged down mostly by energy companies’ struggles with low oil prices and a tepid global economy that threatens to throttle sales growth in many industries. U.S. companies as varied as hamburger chain McDonald’s Corp. and Honeywell International Inc., a maker of gas-processing equipment and cockpit controls, have …