Bloomberg J.C. Penney Co. plans to shutter as many as 140 stores and trim thousands of jobs, becoming the latest department-store chain to make big moves in a world of lower mall traffic and fierce online competition. The closings represent as much as 14 percent of the company’s store base and less than 5 percent of total sales, J.C. ...

  Bloomberg After years of Amazon.com Inc. drubbing Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in e-commerce, the brick-and-mortar chain is beginning to push back. Wal-Mart posted its third straight quarter of double-digit online growth, which helped its holiday results top estimates. The world’s largest retailer is benefiting from last year’s acquisition of Jet.com, a $3.3 billion deal that reinvigorated a flagging e-commerce business ...

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc posted annual profit that missed analyst estimates as the bank took losses on a private-equity business it’s shutting down and said efforts to clean up conduct issues affected performance. The shares fell as much as 5.4 percent. Pretax profit for 2016 was $409 million, compared with a loss of $1.52 billion a year earlier, the ...

  Bloomberg Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce climbed in Toronto trading after posting fiscal first-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates and raising its dividend for the ninth time in 10 quarters. CIBC shares advanced 2.1 percent to C$120.62 at 9:52 a.m., the best performance in the eight-company S&P/TSX Composite Commercial Banks Index, which gained 0.4 percent. The stock is trading ...

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. said U.S. authorities including the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the bank’s hiring of employees with ties to foreign government officials. The lender is cooperating with the probes, New York-based Citigroup said in an annual regulatory filing. The requests involve the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime to pay or give other ...

  Reuters Bank Muscat, Oman’s largest bank by assets, is raising $500 million through a syndicated loan, banking sources familiar with the situation said. The three-year loan refinances a $600 million facility maturing in March that the Omani lender raised in 2014. Bank Muscat’s refinancing facility offers an all-in pricing of 170 basis points over the London Interbank Offered Rate. ...

  Bloomberg Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has undertaken a strategic review of its Asian wealth operations following management changes in the region, Chief Executive Officer David McKay said. McKay declined to say whether the Toronto-based bank is seeking a buyer for the business, though previous retreats in international wealth management have come after reviews were initiated. “We always do strategic ...

  Reuters Commercial Bank of Qatar (CBQ), the Gulf Arab state’s third-largest lender by assets, reported a 99 percent fall in fourth-quarter net profit, according to Reuters calculations. This meant it widely missed analysts forecasts as it was hit by provisions and weakness among its overseas investments. The bank earned a net profit of 1.4 million riyals ($384,499) in the ...

  Bloomberg It took Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo seven years to design and build a laser-scanning system to guide its self-driving cars. Uber Technologies Inc. allegedly did it in nine months. Waymo claims in a lawsuit that was possible because a former employee stole the designs and technology and started a new company. The complaint intensifies Alphabet’s rivalry with Uber, one ...

  Bloomberg French fraud watchdogs are investigating potential abusive clauses in the terms and conditions applicable for users of Twitter Inc., WhatsApp, Alphabet Inc.’s Google + and Snap Inc.’s Snapchat. Facebook Inc. was the first social platform to come under scrutiny but the Menlo Park, California-based company amended its user terms in December after the watchdogs identified several issues, Nathalie ...