Bloomberg A steady weakening in US equity futures snowballed into one of the biggest drops in a month for Nasdaq 100 contracts, as pre-market trading revealed losses of around 1.5 percent in Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Alphabet and Amazon.com. Facebook was in the spotlight as government officials in the US and Europe were demanding answers from the company after reports …

Bloomberg Angela Merkel’s government is seeking to build a liquefied natural gas industry in Germany basically from scratch to reduce the nation’s dependence on supplies arriving by pipeline from Russia and Norway. With gas reservoirs depleting from the UK to the Netherlands, Germany is becoming increasingly reliant on Russia for its energy needs at a time when political tensions are …

Bloomberg Oil halted gains as US explorers resumed their drilling binge, raising concerns over whether output cuts by OPEC and its allies will be enough to clear a glut despite a pledge from Russia that it’s committed to the curbs. Futures in New York fell 0.2 percent after data showed American producers added oil rigs for the seventh time in …

BAGHDAD / Reuters The head of Iraq’s state-oil marketer SOMO said that he expected oil prices to remain at current levels for the whole of 2018. “I expect oil prices to stay stable at their current levels at least until the end of 2018,” SOMO chief Alaa al-Yasiri told reporters at a SOMO event in Baghdad. “Oil price stability depends …

Bloomberg The Democratic Republic of Congo granted Total SA a one-year extension to a license allowing it to explore for oil along the Ugandan border. Total must meet objectives including developing a drilling program before the new permit expires January 26, 2019, Oil Minister Aime Ngoy Mukena said in a written response to questions. The company is also expected to …

Bloomberg China’s home prices rose in the fewest cities in five months in February, as the government’s almost two-year campaign to curb property speculation started to bite. New-home prices, excluding government-subsidised housing, gained in 44 of 70 cities tracked, compared with 52 in January, the National Bureau of Statistics said. Prices fell in 16 cities from the previous month and …

Bloomberg London property asking prices slumped for a seventh straight month as sellers held off putting their homes on the market, according to Rightmove. The March report from the home-listing website shows that asking prices declined 0.6 percent from a year earlier in March, with the number of newly marketed properties falling 3 percent. Prices rose 0.6 percent from February, …

Bloomberg HNA Group Co. will be hard-pressed to get anything close to the $2.2 billion it paid for a Manhattan office tower during its real estate binge. In 2017, the Chinese conglomerate bought 245 Park Ave., a late 1960s-era building that’s home to JPMorgan Chase & Co., paying one of the highest prices ever for a New York office property. …

DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s central bank has instructed banks to change the way they calculate their loan-to-deposit ratios, giving greater weight to long-term deposits in order to permit more lending, according to a report on the Maaal financial news website. The new rules, set to come into effect in early April, will introduce a weighting system for calculating a …

Bloomberg China’s incoming central bank governor, Yi Gang, signalled that he’ll push to maintain the course of financial liberalisation set by his predecessor Zhou Xiaochuan. The National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, voted to approve President Xi Jinping’s choice for governor of the People’s Bank of China. Liu He, Xi’s top economic adviser, was named as a vice premier, indicating that …