Brussels / AFP Soft drinks giant Coca-Cola has agreed to pay more than three billion dollars to recently-merged AB InBev for control of Africa’s biggest soft drinks bottling company, both companies said on Wednesday. On merging with SABMiller in September, Belgian-Brazilian giant AB InBev found itself with 54.5 percent in Coca-Cola Beverages Africa (CCBA) and Coca-Cola said in October ...

  Bloomberg UK retail sales grew at their fastest annual pace in more than a year this month, according to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which also warned that pressure on shoppers’ budgets could increase over the coming year. The CBI’s monthly retail-sales index climbed to 35 in December, the highest since September 2015, from 26 in November. Clothing ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korea’s top carrier Korean Air said its staff followed company procedure in restraining an unruly passenger after 80s pop singer Richard Marx tweeted that he helped the “ill trained” crew handle the situation. Marx said he and his wife were flying from the Vietnamese capital Hanoi to Incheon airport, the South’s main hub, when a ...

  Milan / AFP Stock in Monte dei Paschi di Siena tumbled on Wednesday as investors feared that the troubled Italian bank’s efforts to find billions of euros quickly are all but doomed. BMPS, the world’s oldest bank and Italy’s third-biggest, is racing against the clock to raise five billion euros ($5.2 billion) by the end of next week or ...

  New Delhi / AFP India’s central bank on Wednesday rolled back an order restricting deposits of banned rupee bills into bank accounts, after the move sparked a huge public backlash. Prime Minister Narendra Modi unleashed chaos last month with his shock move to withdraw high-denomination 500 ($7.50) and 1,000 rupee notes from circulation, in an effort to tackle widespread ...

  Luxembourg / AFP The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that Spanish banks must reimburse clients who had signed mortgage contracts that unfairly prevented them from benefiting from a steady drop in interest rates. The decision by the Luxembourg-based court caused shares in Spanish lenders to fall with small lender Liberbank leading losses, down over ten percent in ...

  Bloomberg Turkey’s central bank unexpectedly kept all of its three main interest rates unchanged, and said a “cautious monetary policy” would be maintained as it assesses the impact of a weaker lira on inflation. The lira reversed gains. The bank kept one-week repurchase, overnight lending and borrowing rates unchanged at 8 percent, 8.5 percent and 7.25 percent respectively, it ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business For the third consecutive year, Global Investor, the leading international publication specialising in asset management, named Barclays the ‘Wealth Manager of the Year’ in the Middle East. The award, which was announced during the 2016 Global Investor/ISF MENA Awards ceremony in Dubai, reflects Barclays’ long-standing position as a leader in the Wealth and Investment Management ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, the lender pulling back from some trading businesses, is beefing up its Asia-Pacific equity-derivatives unit as it looks to capitalize on expected demand for quantitative strategies from local investors. David Bruchet, formerly of Societe Generale SA, will join the German bank in Hong Kong as an index equity-derivatives trader at the end of January, said ...

  Bloomberg When the spindle broke off his wife’s sewing machine, Michael Sorkin refused to replace the device. Instead, he bought a 3-D printer and built the part himself. Four years later, he’s using the technology to change how to make the Swiss watch you might get for Christmas. On a rainy afternoon in Sorkin’s company’s dimly lit office in ...