Bloomberg Bank of England (BOE) policy makers are adjusting to an upheaval at the statistics office at the very point when they need as much clarity as possible to help decide whether to raise interest rates next month. The UK is this week shaking up the way it reports growth, publishing monthly updates and delaying its usual quarterly figures. The …

Bloomberg Makram Azar, chairman for Barclays Plc’s Europe, Middle East and Africa banking operations, retired from his role at the British lender, according to a memo to obtained by Bloomberg News. Azar, who also headed the bank’s Middle East’s operations, will return as a senior adviser in January 2019, according to the memo issued by Joe McGrath, global head of …

Bloomberg Investment bankers in Hong Kong are catching biotech fever. At least seven senior bankers and analysts from top-tier securities firms have quit to join biotechnology companies in the city since December, responding to the industry’s growing demand for financial expertise after rule changes at Hong Kong’s stock exchange smoothed the path for biotech initial public offerings. Richard Yeh, a …

Bloomberg A flurry of activity in a remote Canadian town is raising optimism that Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its partners are ready to go ahead with the nation’s largest infrastructure project: a C$40 billion ($30 billion) LNG terminal that could at last unlock energy exports to Asia. The action is unmistakable in Kitimat, British Columbia, the Pacific coast city …

Bloomberg The possible replacement of the UK’s aging nuclear reactor fleet may offer China’s ambitious atomic power companies an outlet for investment and technology. That could be the driver behind reports over the weekend by London-based Sunday Times that state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp “made an approach” about acquiring as much as 49 percent in eight UK nuclear power …

Bloomberg For decades, Vietnamese have shopped, snacked and hung out at the country’s traditional markets: colorful, chaotic mazes of open air stalls where vendors hawk everything from fruits and vegetables, to sandwiches and sodas to the odd clucking chicken. Seven-Eleven is pushing a different model. The Japanese-owned chain in August opened its first outlet in the country, an air-conditioned, Wi-Fi …

Bloomberg London Stansted and Manchester airports owner MAG said it sees a relatively easy fix for the potential grounding of flights between the UK and European Union in the event of a so-called hard Brexit. The existing open-skies regime that permits unfettered flying by EU airlines within the bloc could easily be maintained by adopting a structure “mimicking” the status …

Bloomberg Air France-KLM shares jumped the most in more than a year after a French newspaper reported that the troubled carrier is getting closer to appointing a new boss, and June traffic figures were better-than-expected. The French government — the airline’s biggest shareholder — is pushing Catherine Guillouard, who heads Paris metro operator RATP, as the future chief executive officer, …

Bloomberg Amazon may be the bogeyman for many a business, and shopping mall investors have been among the most frightened. But MallPlaza’s not scared. The Chilean mall operator is prepping for an IPO this month, and its executives have been shrugging off the threat posed by the titan of e-commerce in recent meetings with analysts, citing the frequent addition of …

DUBAI / Emirates Business Going green has now become a key business strategy and retailers that adopt sustainable practices in their operations will continue to harness value and gain competitive advantage, industry reports reveal. Consumers across all demographics are increasingly becoming more eco-conscious as reflected in the Nielsen Global Survey on Corporate Social Responsibility, which found that 55% of global …