Bloomberg Members of the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. fortune, are backing a startup that thinks it can turn a profit by reducing food waste. The business, called FoodMaven, has completed an $8.6 million Series A fundraising round that includes financing from the billionaire Walton clan. The family office is Walton Enterprises, which holds nearly half of …

Bloomberg As everyone learned when a passenger was forcibly removed from a United Express flight, social media and the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras have shifted the ground rules for airline customer service. The best and worst corporate interactions speed across the internet with potentially dire results for corporate targets of public anger. For air carriers in particular, “the world …

Bloomberg US stocks added to all-time highs before the start of earnings season, while the dollar got a boost from policy steps in Asia that propelled Treasury yields to the highest level in nine months. The S&P 500 Index rose a sixth straight advance in an unblemished start to the year, the Dow Jones Industrial average resumed its march higher …

Reuters Gulf stock markets were mostly sluggish on Tuesday as Qatar slowed after surging for two days, but Egypt’s bourse rose after authorities announced a date for presidential elections. Some of the best performers of the past two days pulled back, with Doha Bank losing 1.5 percent. But Aamal Co rose 2.4 percent after announcing plans for an affiliate which …

LONDON / Reuters Gasoline exports from Europe to the Middle East have surged in recent months to record highs as traders seek to fill a gap due to particularly heavy refinery maintenance in the region in the coming months, according to shipping data and trading sources. So far this month, at least a dozen tankers have been confirmed or placed …

Bloomberg India, the largest importer of Chinese solar equipment, proposed a 70 percent safeguard duty on cells and modules shipped from China and Malaysia, citing “threat of serious injury” to the domestic industry. Acting on an application by five local cell and module makers, the Directorate General of Safeguards, Customs and Central Excise made the proposal in a document dated …

Bloomberg Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is set to appoint banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc. to help manage its initial public offering, people familiar with the matter said, as the state-owned crude producer pushes ahead with what could be the world’s largest share sale. JPMorgan Chase & Co., HSBC Holdings Plc and Morgan Sta- nley, which have …

Bloomberg Oil steadied near $62 a barrel on estimates that US crude stockpiles declined for an eighth week as the rebalancing of global markets continues. Futures added as much as 1.3 percent in New York to the highest intraday level in almost three years. US inventories probably fell by 3.75 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg survey before …

Bloomberg OPEC’s strategy to end a worldwide crude glut is causing havoc for a vital link in the oil industry’s supply chain: the fleet of supertankers that shuttle fuel between continents. The ships’ average earnings plunged last year by more than half to levels not seen since 2009 and far below what shipping analysts had been predicting. Now, the producer …

TUNIS / Reuters Libya’s National Oil Corp (NOC) said it had won two international arbitration cases over the 220,000 bpd-capacity Ras Lanuf refinery, and called for the refinery to restart as soon as possible. The NOC said in a statement that the arbitration cases, which date to 2013, had been settled in its favour at the International Chamber of Commerce …