New York / AFP Erste Group Bank AG, Austria’s biggest bank, beat analyst expectations for first-quarter profit as a sharp drop in bad debt provisions outweighed declining lending and fee revenue. Net income came in at 274.7 million euros ($316 million) in the three months through March compared with 226 million euros a year earlier, the Vienna-based bank said in ...

  Madrid / AFP Spanish banks, which slimmed down after a property boom went bust in 2008, are once again closing branches and slashing jobs as their profitability is hit by stiff competition. The country’s three biggest lenders — Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank — last week all posted lower first quarter net profits, especially in Spain, which is grappling with ...

  Bloomberg The mortgage upstarts that transformed the industry after the U.S. housing crash are now facing their own shakeout. Soaring expenses are squeezing profits for nonbank lenders, which have grown to almost half of the mortgage market, as new rules and stepped-up regulatory scrutiny slice into already-thin margins. The average cost to originate a home loan jumped by 18 ...

  Bloomberg SouFun Holdings Ltd. plans to switch its stock listing from the U.S. to China, joining companies including Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co. that are seeking higher valuations on mainland stock exchanges. SouFun, China’s biggest real estate web portal, is seeking to move its shares to the Shanghai stock exchange via an asset and share swap with storage-battery manufacturer ...

  Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP is in talks to acquire industrial property assets in Australia valued at about A$250 million ($190 million) from Malaysian palm-oil producer Sime Darby Bhd., according to people familiar with the matter. The New York-based private equity firm is in discussions to acquire as many as five industrial buildings in Australia, the people said, asking not ...

  Bloomberg While a luxury-condo glut spurs some of New York’s biggest developers to re-evaluate their plans, a relative newcomer is plowing ahead with confidence. Michael Shvo, a former real estate broker who closed his eponymous firm during the financial crisis, says he has about $4.3 billion worth of apartments under development and two more sites in contract. He’s trying ...

  Bloomberg Next Plc, the British clothing retailer, cut its sales forecast for the second time this year after reporting first-quarter revenue that missed estimates on unfavorably cold spring weather, sending another chill over the embattled UK apparel sector. Next now expects full-year sales to fall within a range of negative 3.5 percent and 3.5 percent growth due to weaker ...

  Bloomberg UK supermarket chain J Sainsbury Plc reported annual profit that beat estimates as the company outperformed peers in a market blighted by deflation and discount competition. Operating profit fell 11 percent to 700 million pounds ($1.02 billion) in the 52 weeks ended March 12, the country’s second-biggest grocer said in a statement Wednesday. Analysts expected 683.4 million pounds, ...

  Paris / AFP Air France-KLM announced on Wednesday it had trimmed losses in the first quarter of 2016 but the airline said passenger traffic to Paris had been affected by terror attacks in Europe and it warned of a difficult year ahead. The Franco-Dutch group warned of doubts over fuel prices, some bloated routes and uncertainty over the economic ...

  Bloomberg Gol Linhas Aereas SA is offering to exchange $780 million of dollar-denominated notes for new securities maturing over a decade, as the Brazilian airline struggles to reshape its finances amid a deepening recession in the domestic market. Bondholders of five different tranches of debt, one of them maturing as early as next year, are being asked to accept ...