Bloomberg Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic drew a parallel from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, causing an uproar across the Balkans. “Who annexed Kosovo? The international community, including us,” Milanovic said Monday in a speech in the Croatian town of Petrinja, where he spoke about the war in Ukraine. “Kosovo was taken from Serbia by force, ...

  Bloomberg Europe could boost bank lending by as much as €4.5 trillion ($4.9 trillion) by lightening the industry’s regulatory burden, according to a study commissioned by the region’s banking lobby. That increase of almost 30% would stem from bringing demands for European banks’ capital reserves and related costs more in line with those of US competitors, consultant Oliver Wyman ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG’s investment bank underperformed US peers in the fourth quarter, as equities revenue slumped and the Swiss firm failed to match gains in fixed-income trading. Revenue at the equities division — about twice the size of the debt and forex business — fell about 20% to $883 million, compared with declines of about half that on Wall ...