Bloomberg China is the latest victim of the wild swings in oil prices that have roiled trading firms across the globe this year. Two top officials at Unipec, one of the country’s most powerful trading companies, were suspended this week following losses on bets related to oil prices in the second half of the year, according to people with knowledge ...

Bloomberg Hitachi Ltd. is seeking to buy Polish leasing and vehicle-fleet operator Prime Car Management SA, potentially setting up a bidding war between the country’s largest lender and the Japanese manufacturing conglomerate. A local leasing and fleet-management unit of Hitachi offered to acquire all shares of Gdansk-based Prime Car at 12.09 zloty each, according to a filing. That would value ...

Bloomberg One of Hong Kong’s biggest sales of residential land this year added to the picture of a worsening home market. China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd. won the site in Kai Tak with a bid of $1,726 per square foot of floor area. That’s 13 percent less than Goldin Group paid last month for a nearby parcel. “The number ...

Bloomberg The daughters of Nissan Motor Co.’s former chairman Carlos Ghosn, indicted on suspicion of violating Japan’s financial reporting laws, believe the accusations are part of an internal revolt within the carmaker to prevent a merger with Renault, the New York Times reports. His eldest daughter, Caroline Ghosn, said when she saw Nissan Chief Executive Officer Hiroto Saikawa’s televised news ...

Bloomberg China’s red-hot bond rally is ending the year on a high note. The nation’s 10-year government bond futures surged as much as 0.49 percent in intraday trading, the most since November 14, and the yield on the notes fell in the cash bond market. This came as the PBOC net injected $32 billion into the financial system through open-market ...

Bloomberg China’s Ministry of Education has asked universities to inspect all research work on gene editing and submit a report to the government by year end showing that the work doesn’t breach ethical boundaries. The order comes a month after Shenzhen-based researcher He Jiankui shocked the world by claiming he had edited the genes of a pair of twin baby ...

Bloomberg The cost of pollution in the European Union’s cap-and-trade system is likely to surge again next year, contributing to rising electricity costs that are already uncomfortable for industry. Carbon futures, reflecting the price factories and utilities pay for their emissions, tripled in 2018, making it the best performing major commodity of the year. Those contracts may surge again in ...

Bloomberg The UK has awarded contracts worth 108 million pounds ($137.2 million) to charter extra ferries for freight shipments between southern England and the rest of Europe in the event that a no-deal Brexit creates bottlenecks at Dover’s port, the BBC said. Department for Transport officials hired Brittany Ferries of France, Danish shipping firm DFDS and UK-based Seaborne Freight for ...

Bloomberg Contract signings to purchase previously owned US homes unexpectedly fell for a second month in November, offering yet another sign that the housing market is struggling. The index of pending home sales decreased 0.7 percent, according to data by the National Association of Realtors in Washington. The gauge slumped 7.7 percent from a year earlier on an unadjusted basis, ...

Bloomberg As Canadian grain companies spend millions to upgrade and build new export terminals in Vancouver, a new problem is threatening to cause transportation bottlenecks at the nation’s largest port: vessels can’t load grain in the rain. And it rains a lot in Vancouver. In Canada’s wettest major city, the practice of loading ocean-bound vessels with grain in rainy weather ...