Bloomberg Oil fell again on Monday along with broader commodities markets, as China’s return from Lunar New Year holidays failed to deliver hoped-for gains. West Texas Intermediate slid near to $78 a barrel after topping $81 last week. Risk-off sentiment appeared to permeate markets as European equities and US equity futures dropped at the start of a week marked ...

Bloomberg Shell Plc’s new chief moved to overhaul the energy major’s core business units just a month after taking the helm. Shell will combine its integrated gas and upstream divisions, and merge its downstream and renewables units, it said on Monday. It’s the second significant announcement in a week after Chief Executive Officer Wael Sawan launched a strategic review of ...

Bloomberg Parts of Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic hub, are being subjected to renewed water-supply cuts as ongoing electricity shortages disrupt pumping operations. A power failure at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station, which supplies reservoirs in several high-lying areas of Johannesburg, resulted in critically low levels of supply, the municipality said on Twitter on Monday. While repairs have been completed, it ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Olaf Scholz is using a trip to Latin America to help Germany secure additional supplies of the lithium that car giants like Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Volkswagen AG need for their electric-vehicle batteries. Chile is the world’s second-largest supplier of lithium after Australia and much of its output is currently gobbled up by China. Scholz, who met with ...

  Bloomberg Denmark proposed to spend an extra 2.3 billion kroner ($340 million) on inflation aid, mainly targeting senior citizens. The government will now start talks with opposition parties in parliament to reach a broad deal and decide on the details, Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen told reporters in Copenhagen on Monday. Consumers in Denmark have been hit heavily by accelerating ...

  Bloomberg Germany’s economy shrank 0.2% at the end of last year — a worse outcome than previously flagged and one that makes a recession on the back of rising energy bills more likely after all. The figures Monday from the statistics office contrast with an estimate this month for output to have stagnated in the fourth quarter. They also ...

  Bloomberg Spanish inflation unexpectedly quickened in January after a five-month run of slowing price growth, prompting traders to boost their bets on how high the European Central Bank will raise interest rates. Consumer prices advanced by 5.8% from a year ago, up from the previous month’s 5.5% increase, the statistics institute in Madrid said Monday. That’s well above the ...

  Bloomberg Britain’s homebuilders have six weeks to sign a UK government contract that will commit them to repair unsafe cladding on apartment blocks — or face banishment from the housing market. The pledge will commit firms to spend an estimated £2 billion ($2.5 billion) to fix tall buildings they developed or refurbished over the past 30 years, according to ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he cannot raise UK taxes to fund pay rises for workers in the state-run National Health Service. “Where we are with taxes at the moment, we can’t put them up,” Sunak told an audience of health-care workers in northeastern England, adding that government spending on the NHS is at a historical high. “The pie ...

Bloomberg Russia’s hunt for weapons to fire at Ukraine could provide a lifeline for North Korea, where even a relatively modest arms deal would help lift the country’s cash-starved and stagnant economy into growth. The US made fresh accusations this month that Kim Jong Un is providing arms and ammunition to aid Putin’s war, including sending shells and rockets. While ...