Reuters Egypt’s blue chip equities index jumped on Thursday after the central bank floated the currency, a step which could eventually resolve its hard currency shortage, while Saudi Arabia gained for a second straight week. The Egyptian EGX30 index soared as much as 8.4 percent in the first hour of trade after the central bank devalued the pound by …

  FRANKFURT/ AP Global stock markets were mixed on Thursday, bogged down by concerns over the outcome of next week’s US presidential election. The British pound jumped after a court ruled that parliament must vote before the government can trigger a two-year countdown to Britain’s exit from the European Union. KEEPING SCORE: In Europe, Germany’s DAX rose 0.1 percent to …

  Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. unveiled a corporate team-chat service that works with its cloud-based Office and Skype products, aiming to take on Slack Technologies Inc. and Atlassian Corp.’s HipChat in a growing market. The new product is “designed to facilitate real-time conversations and collaboration while maintaining and building up that institutional knowledge of a team,” said Chief Executive Officer Satya …