Bloomberg England’s third lockdown hit non-essential retailers harder than the previous one in November, with the new variant of the coronavirus hampering spending and confidence last month, according to the British Retail Consortium. Clothing and footwear stores fared particularly badly as retailers on the whole saw the value of sales decline from a year earlier, the business lobby said. A …

Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will seek to buy more than 3 trillion rupees ($41 billion) of sovereign bonds in the next fiscal year to support the government’s borrowing plans, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. That will exceed the 3 trillion rupees the RBI is expected to spend for the current year ending March. …

Bloomberg Societe Generale SA vowed to return capital to investors even as it ended its first losing year in more than three decades with a slump in trading. In contrast to double-digit trading gains at Wall Street peers, SocGen saw equities trading — its traditional strength — falls 7% from a year earlier and fixed-income revenue drop 16%. Net income …