Bloomberg Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. reduced its output target for oil and natural gas due to the drop in crude prices that started in 2014, Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said. Kufpec, a unit of state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp., revised its production goal for 2020 to 150,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent from 200,000 barrels a …

Bloomberg Iraqi Kurdistan-focussed Genel Energy expects oil and gas production to fall for a third year in 2018, it said, as it shifts its focus to two new gas fields. The decline in production is due to a continuing slide in output from the Taq Taq field, once considered Genel’s flagship field, after the well hit water in 2016. Genel’s …

Bloomberg European banks may have scored a victory in having the Basel III capital standards toned down, but that doesn’t mean they can rest on their laurels. There are more battles to come in 2018, in particular lobbying lawmakers on a series of measures designed to reduce risk in the system. The regulations are deemed a vital step towards the …

SYDNEY/ Reuters The Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) plans to develop more detailed guidance on financial safety nets to help harmonise Islamic principles with existing legal systems, as the industry body strengthens ties with financial regulators. The Malaysia-based IFSB, one of the main standard-setting bodies in Islamic finance, is seeking to shed light on issues relating to sharia-compliant transactions in …

Bloomberg As Nordea Bank AB’s Bitcoin ban for staff has unions questioning the legality of the move, Sweden’s minister in charge of financial legislation says it’s understandable that the industry is resorting to such measures. “If banks have rules on what investments they or their employees are trading in, it is up to them,” Financial Markets Minister Per Bolund told …

Bloomberg UBS Group AG plans to keep the maximum amount of jobs and business in the UK as the country works towards a solution with European authorities on its exit from the trading block. The bank considers a centralised model more efficient and favors a European financial center that can “balance” New York, investment banking head Andrea Orcel said in …

Bloomberg ICICI Bank Ltd., India’s second-largest private lender by assets, predicts the nation’s rate-cut cycle has ended and traders should brace for tightening in the coming months. “Reduction in the interest rate cycle has stopped now,” Chief Executive Officer Chanda Kochhar said in an interview with Bloom-berg TV. “We should be prepared for an increase over a period.” Kochhar wades …

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan said Governor Haruhiko Kuroda wasn’t revising the inflation outlook when he said in Davos that consumer prices are finally moving close to the 2 percent target. “There are some indications that wages are actually rising, and some prices have already started to rise and even medium- to long-term inflation expectations, which have been so weak …

Bloomberg Welcome back to America, C Series. Bombardier Inc.’s marquee jet, slapped with crushing US tariffs in 2017, got a new lease on life when an American trade panel nixed the duties. The recent ruling, a surprise defeat for Boeing Co., enables Bombardier to jump-start sales campaigns in the world’s largest aircraft market. A revival of orders would help debt-laden …

Bloomberg Walmart Stores Inc. is cutting as many as 1,000 jobs at its headquarters this year and next, the latest effort to streamline a retail empire under threat from Amazon.com Inc. The first wave of layoffs totalled between 400 and 500 jobs and hit the company’s marketing, human resources, merchandising, real estate and other divisions this week, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based …