London / AFP Stock markets in Europe trod higher on Thursday ahead of an eagerly-awaited monetary policy decision by the European Central Bank. Frankfurt and Paris both rose 0.2 percent ahead of the interest rate call due at 1145 GMT, while London flatlined on news of steady retail sales for September. ECB chief Mario Draghi is likely to prep ...

  Bloomberg Qatar is considering investing in the $100 billion global technology fund formed by SoftBank Group Corp. and Saudi Arabia, according to people familiar with the matter. SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son has visited Doha and other parts of the Gulf region in recent months to discuss investments with global investors, one of the people said, asking not to be ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s two biggest telecom operators reported weaker third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, as the cost of implementing a government initiative to register fingerprints with phone numbers weighed on both providers. A 7.5 percent drop in profit at market leader Saudi Telecom Co’s (STC) represented a continuation of an earnings slump which has now seen it report ...

  Reuters Egypt’s economy is likely to grow 3.5 percent in the 2016/17 fiscal year, missing the government’s target of around 5 percent and falling below last year’s growth rate, a Reuters poll showed. The poll, which surveyed 17 analysts, found growth would pick up only slightly to reach 3.7 percent the following fiscal year. Egypt has been struggling to ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Electricity Co., the dominant electricity provider in the Arab world’s biggest economy, reported its best quarterly profit in more than a decade after the state-controlled utility raised prices following subsidy cuts. Third-quarter net income surged to 4.4 billion riyals ($1.2 billion) from 2.92 billion riyals in the year-earlier period, the company said in a statement to the ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia is repaying debts to contractors after long delays that squeezed company finances and hurt investor sentiment. Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf said in a televised interview on MBC Wednesday that payments have been “regularized and will rise in the coming period.” While he didn’t offer details, three people familiar with the matter said the government has started ...

  Reuters Exxon Mobil’s boss Rex Tillerson and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister took opposing views on declining investment in the oil sector setting the stage for a possible major supply crunch. More than two years of downturn that saw oil prices halve to around $50 a barrel today after a boom in U.S. shale oil production have led to a ...

  AFP Japan is eyeing an overhaul of how it measures growth in its economy, and that is stirring fresh questions about the reliability of the world’s go-to indicator – gross domestic product — in the digital age. Researchers at Japan’s central bank crunched some numbers recently and concluded that the booming-economy-turned-perennial-laggard actually grew 2.4 percent in fiscal 2014 rather ...

  Bloomberg China’s biggest coal miner has sprung into action as the government calls on major producers to ease supply tightness before winter. China Shenhua Energy Co. output jumped more than 14 percent in September from the same month last year, while national production was down more than 12 percent, company and government data on Wednesday showed. And as national ...

  Bloomberg Reliance Industries Ltd.’s second-quarter profit rose 18 percent from a year earlier, buoyed by higher earnings from its petrochemicals business. Net income for the operator of the world’s biggest oil-refining complex rose to 77.04 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) in the three months ended Sept. 30, the Mumbai-based company said Thursday in a stock exchange filing. That compares with ...