Bloomberg Massmart Holdings Ltd fell the most in three months as the troubled South African retail chain warned on profit and majority shareholder Walmart Inc sent one its own to help stem declines. Earnings may drop as much as 50 percent in the first five months of the year compared with a year ago, Massmart said, when the company also …

Bloomberg Saudi Aramco agreed to a buy a stake in Sempra Energy’s Texas LNG export terminal, giving the world’s biggest oil exporter a foo-thold in the fast-growing global gas trade. The proposed deal, which also includes an agreement to buy gas from the plant, would mark Aramco’s first entry into production of oil or gas outside Saudi Arabia. Aramco can …

Bloomberg Signs of a turnaround at its marquee Jaguar Land Rover unit may not be enough to ease the challenges facing India’s oldest and most-storied business empire. The Tata Group bought the British luxury carmaker in 2008 for $2.3 billion, and it’s lately become a drag on the salt-to-software conglomerate, racking up losses in three quarters through December. Although Jaguar …

Bloomberg US equity futures dipped and European stocks fluctuated after a mixed session in Asia as investors digested the latest in the Sino-American confrontation over technology. Oil declined while the dollar and Treasuries were steady before the latest Fed minutes. Contracts on the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average edged lower with Chinese equities after the White …

Bloomberg Indian equities rose ahead of the official outcome of national elections on Thursday, with nearly all exit polls projecting the re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The S&P BSE Sensex gained 0.4 percent to 39,110.21 in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index gained 0.3 percent to 11,737.90. The benchmark stock index retreated after closing at a record high …

Bloomberg US central bankers may have “slightly overdone it” by raising interest rates in December, though it’s premature to talk about a rate cut, said Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard. “Rates are at a good place in the US right now, if anything we are a little restrictive I would say,” Bullard said in an interview …

Bloomberg UBS Group AG is close to settling a tax evasion case with Italy for about 100 million euros ($110 million), according to people familiar with the matter. The agreement may come within the next few weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. UBS declined to comment. The Swiss bank has said it …

Bloomberg Mario Draghi warned against exaggerating the tradeoffs between risk sharing and risk reduction in the euro zone, arguing it has hampered monetary policy transmission. “Since a long time we have reached an impasse on key issues including on completing the banking union and deepening fiscal policy coordination,” the European Central Bank President said in Frankfurt on Wednesday. “This has …

Bloomberg Nigerian policy makers urged banks to turn on the taps and increase lending to stimulate the economy, or have access to a near-risk free way of making money choked off. The West African nation’s Monetary Policy Committee is using persuasion to get banks away from parking their cash in high-yielding government securities to divert these funds to the private …

Bloomberg Japan’s biggest banks have warned investors of a tough year ahead. The nation’s three megabanks have been relying on the healthy status of borrowers and sales of so-called cross-shareholdings for earnings as rock-bottom interest rates crimp lending profitability. Results on Wednesday showed they are losing those benefits at a time when the economy is weakening, trade tensions are escalating …