Bloomberg Now that worries Italian banks will suffer a meltdown have subsided, lenders need to persuade investors they can make money. Both optimistic buyers and more skeptical investors, gathered on the shores of Lake Como for the annual Ambrosetti Forum, agree that momentum for bank shares will depend mainly on an acceleration of economic growth and higher interest rates, while ...

BEIJING / Reuters Independent oil refiners in China’s Shandong province are planning to form a consortium to integrate their production of oil products and petrochemicals, according to a planning document reviewed by Reuters. Since late 2015, China has allowed 31 mostly privately-owned oil refineries to import crude oil, the majority of them based in Shandong province. With a combined capacity ...

Bloomberg The UK North Sea is on track for the biggest year of oil and gas field startups in a decade, continuing the aging province’s surprising resilience to the crude-market slump. Fourteen projects with combined peak production of 230,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day will start in the region this year, according to data from consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd. ...

Bloomberg Hurricane Harvey’s crushing blow to the US energy industry reveals just how dependent Mexico has become on natural gas from its northern neighbor. The storm’s wrath forced cross-border gas pipelines in Texas to shut and prevented tankers from loading cargoes of the fuel. Mexican consumers, who are burning record amounts of gas from America’s prolific shale basins, had no ...

Bloomberg Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. is nearing a deal to acquire Cenovus Energy Inc.’s Pelican Lake oil asset for about C$1 billion ($807 million), according to people familiar with the matter. Canadian Natural advanced to the final round of bidding alongside Cona Resources Ltd. for the asset, which is located about 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Edmonton, said the ...

Bloomberg Gasoline declined to the lowest in more than a week as some US Gulf Coast refineries said they plan to resume operations following shutdowns forced by flooding from Hurricane Harvey. Futures for October delivery lost as much as 4.5 percent in New York after their biggest monthly gain since March last year. While about one-fifth of US refining capacity ...

Bloomberg State-owned conglomerate China Merchants Group is exploring acquisitions of offshore rig operators, which have struggled to recover from a collapse in oil-industry spending, people with knowledge of the matter said. As part of this analysis, the Chinese firm has looked at various assets and companies including Seadrill Ltd. and Shelf Drilling Ltd., the people said, asking not to be ...

Bloomberg South Korea detected that North Korea is continuing to prepare for a possible intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch, a move that would further raise tensions a day after it conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear detonation. Chang Kyung-soo, acting chief of the defense ministry’s policy planning office, told lawmakers on Monday that North Korea was making preparations for ...

Bloomberg The United Nations asked the International Criminal Court to investigate whether human-rights violations committed in Burundi constitute crimes against humanity. A probe by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi found that the authorities in the East African nation committed crimes including extrajudicial executions, torture and enforced disappearances over the past two years, according to a report published on ...

Bloomberg Kenya’s economy may pay the price of opposition leader Raila Odinga’s successful bid to nullify the outcome of last month’s election, as prolonged political uncertainty pending a court-ordered rerun weighs on growth and investor confidence. “There was a lot of exuberance that the elections were over,” Kenneth Minjire, head of securities at Genghis Capital in Nairobi, said by phone. ...