Bloomberg Britain’s antitrust watchdog urged the European Union to block CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.’s plan to create the country’s biggest mobile phone operator, wading into a row two months ahead of a U.K. vote on its future in Europe. The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, which failed to wrest the deal review from the European Commission, said that what Hutchison ...

Bloomberg When it comes to inflation, bond traders are finally starting to listen to the Federal Reserve. After trying, and failing, to convince investors the steep drop-off in inflation in the past year was just a short-term blip, the Fed is now winning them over. Since mid-February, the outlook for consumer-price gains has soared from post-crisis lows as oil rebounds ...

NEW YORK / Reuters Argentina settled with additional creditors holding defaulted sovereign bonds for $253 million, Daniel Pollack, the court-appointed mediator in the long-running case, said. The agreements in principle reached late last week with several groups of creditors bring the aggregate amount of settled claims to approximately $8 billion, the statement said. “In my capacity as Special Master, with ...

Bloomberg Hedge funds betting that oil’s rally was over missed an 11 percent gain after U.S. crude inventories unexpectedly fell. Short positions in West Texas Intermediate crude jumped 35 percent in the week ended April 5, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The next day, the government reported a 4.94 million-barrel drop in U.S. oil inventories, the first ...

Reuters Mexico expects gold and silver production this year to drop while copper output will be flat as low prices continue to weigh on the sector, the government’s top mining official said in an interview. Mario Cantu, the economy ministry’s general mining coordinator, said gold output this year is estimated to reach about 120,000 kilograms, or down nearly 4 percent ...

Reuters The average price of farmland in Canada, the world’s largest canola grower and one of the biggest wheat exporters, will rise at a slower pace in 2016 amid a downturn in commodity prices. Growers should prepare for a “possible easing” of farmland values after prices in many key regions rose at a slower rate in 2015, Farm Credit Canada, ...

Reuters Brazil’s BM&FBovespa SA is arranging loan financing to fund its 12.9 billion reais ($3.6 billion) takeover of rival Cetip SA Mercados Organizados as both companies agreed to form a giant financial exchange with a presence from Mexico to Chile. BM&FBovespa Chief Executive Officer Edemir Pinto, who will run the combined entity, declined to elaborate on the loan. Shares of ...

Khang Vu SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS As the race to the White House is heating up, Asian countries are paying close attention to the candidates’ foreign policy platforms. For the last few weeks, international headlines have focused on Donald Trump’s vision of a nuclearized Northeast Asia and his proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea and Japan if the ...

The five-day visit of the Custodian of The Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, to Egypt is seen as Riyadh’s political and economic support for Cairo to overcome current economic and political challenges. It also reflects the regional role of the two countries: Saudi Arabia, which is the top Arab economy, and Egypt, the ...

Europe’s economic malaise has a lot to do with its crippled banking system. Making that system more fragile seems like the wrong way to address the issue. With the European Central Bank taking interest rates deeper into negative territory and the euro-area economy languishing, investors have become more concerned about the future profitability — and perhaps the viability — of ...