Bloomberg China’s biggest refiner plans to reduce operations from next month after a surge in the cost of shipping crude eroded margins. Freight rates have skyrocketed since the US announced sanctions on Chinese shipowners in late-September, triggering a flight from vessels owned by affected companies and a bidding war for alternative tankers. That’s driven up the cost of importing crude …

Bloomberg Hold on to your smartphone — the holiday price wars between Walmart Inc and Amazon.com Inc are heating up. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has introduced a programme to temporarily lower the price consumers pay for some items on its marketplace site, where third-party vendors pay Walmart a fee to list their goods. The merchants selling on the site, …

Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co’s pilots don’t expect to see Boeing Co’s 737 Max resume flights until February “at least,” given work still to be done in a process fraught with safety concerns and politics. That’s well beyond the January 6 date the carrier has set for the grounded plane to be back in its schedule. But ending a global flying …