Bloomberg The World Bank has committed $12 billion to African countries to support vaccination programs across a continent that hasn’t been able to keep pace with developed nations’ rollouts. The World Bank money will be in the form of grants or on “highly concessional terms,” said David Malpass, president of the World Bank, in a statement following a virtual meeting …

Bloomberg American oil executives began a pushback against some of President Joe Biden’s climate policies by making the case that fossil fuels from US shale have a lower carbon footprint than imports. Since taking office this month, the Biden administration has made swift moves to pause sales of oil and gas leases on federal land, cancel the Keystone XL pipeline …

Bloomberg Asian and European investors are pouring money into dollar corporate bonds, which have grown more enticing as longer-term US yields have risen and hedging costs have fallen. A European investor can earn about 1.03% on an average US high-grade corporate bond after hedging, or around 0.8 percentage point above euro-denominated counterparts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s one …

Bloomberg More than one-third of the 89 billion pounds ($122 billion) of lending handed out by the UK government to help businesses through the pandemic will never be repaid, according to the National Audit Office. The report, based on government estimates, says 31 billion pounds ($42.51 billion) will need to be written off, highlighting the dire position of many firms …

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) probably won’t cut interest rates below zero in the foreseeable future even as the growth outlook deteriorates. Just one of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg anticipate a move to sub-zero rates for the first time in the BOE’s three-century history. The central bank is due to publish the results of a consultation about how …

Bloomberg China’s central bank is winning the battle against leverage, yanking billions of funds from the financial system and crushing a popular trade in the bond market. The People’s Bank of China drained a net 150 billion yuan ($23 billion) of funds using open-market operations, the largest such amount since October. That adds to its 178 billion yuan withdrawal from …

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. cut Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Charlie Scharf’s compensation about 12% for 2020, a year in which shares tumbled and the company slashed its dividend and reported its first quarterly loss since 2008. The board paid Scharf $20.3 million for 2020, his first full year atop Wells Fargo, down from $23 million for 2019. The San Francisco-based …

Bloomberg Ghana banks are extending relief measures to cushion clients from fallout of pandemic as a resurgence in the number of infections threatens an economic recovery. Lenders are retaining measures such as reduced borrowing costs, restructured credit facilities and repayment holidays to customers into 2021 to “ensure that the wheels of the economy continue grinding,” John Awuah, chief executive officer …

Bloomberg Jaguar’s classics department has announced it will make eight more of the curvaceous C-Type that was originally produced from 1951 to 1953. The continuation cars, set to converge on a special track day in 2022 to mark 70 years since the original release, will be the fourth of its kind for the Coventry, England-based company. Jaguar started developing Jaguar …

Bloomberg Content from discredited websites that masquerade as journalism proliferated on Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. in 2020 despite the companies’ efforts to stem disinformation, according to research from the German Marshall Fund. On Twitter, the spread of deceptive websites was driven by accounts that have been verified as real but tweet out content from other sites that repeatedly post …