BEIJING / Bloomberg The head of China’s securities regulator has been removed from his post after last year’s $5 trillion stock- market bust, an unprecedented government rescue and a renewed crisis as plunging Chinese equities last month reverberated around the world. Xiao Gang, 57, a former head of Bank of China Ltd., had been chairman of the China Securities Regulatory …

BOGOTA / AP Citibank is planning to sell the consumer banking operations it has operated for a century in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia as South America’s three biggest economies suffer a major downturn. The New York-based bank said Friday in a statement that its decision was prompted by a desire to allocate resources where it can generate the best returns. …

Colombo / AFP Sri Lanka’s central bank raised benchmark interest rates for the first time in nearly four years by 50 basis points ahead of a possible IMF bailout. The Central Bank of Sri Lanka raised its lending rate from 7.5 to 8.0 percent, saying that relatively cheap money had the potential to fuel demand-driven inflation that could undermine the …