Reuters Petrochemicals giant Sabic is scouting for more overseas ventures to ease its dependence on domestic Saudi Arabian natural gas as it pushes ahead with its largest foreign investment with U.S. partner Exxon Mobil. “We do have projects that we evaluate with our existing partners or potential partners… We are a global company, we have the capability to start ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA settled four lawsuits brought by investors including Pacific Investment Management Co. after the nation’s biggest-ever corruption case torpedoed the company’s market value. Petrobras’ board approved agreements with Pimco Total Return Fund, Janus Overseas Fund, Dodge & Cox International Stock Fund and Al Shams Investments, according to a statement filed with Brazil’s ...

  Emirates Business Preferred Hotels & Resorts, the world’s largest global provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent luxury hotels, continues to expand its Middle East portfolio with the addition of two new five-star hotels in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and another five-star hotel in the Kingdom of Bahrain. The three additions consist of a duo of ...

  Jakarta / AFP Apple is battling to gain a foothold in Indonesia after nationalistic regulations hit the US tech giant’s efforts to compete in the booming emerging market against Samsung and other rivals. The iPhone 6S and 7 are yet to be released in Southeast Asia’s top economy as Apple struggles to fulfil requirements that phone makers must have ...

  Beijing / AFP Asian lenders are spending millions of dollars developing applications using blockchain, a technology that promises to slash transaction costs, expedite cross-border payments and reduce the risk of fraud. Banks active in the region from Standard Chartered Plc to National Australia Bank Ltd. have in recent months started developing and testing systems utilizing the distributed-ledger technology in ...

  Bloomberg Sitting in the middle of almost 270 billion tons of coal reserves, the city of Taiyuan in northern China is an unlikely place to look for a leader in the battle for a greener future. This after all was China’s pollution poster child, a grimy industrial city of 4.3-million people that owed its growth to the coalfields of ...

  Bloomberg Mitsui & Co., Japan’s second-biggest trading house, agreed to purchase a 15 percent stake in New Ocean Capital, the asset manager that was founded by XL Group Ltd. and Stone Point Capital to make insurance-related bets. Mitsui also committed $100 million of investment capital to the private fund platform, Bermuda-based New Ocean said recently in a statement. XL, ...

  Madrid / AFP After basking in its best tourist summer season in 15 years, Spain now sees dark clouds on the horizon as popular destinations reach saturation point and holidaymakers are more thrifty, industry experts say. The 2016 summer season proved exceptionally good, with an influx of tourists fleeing other popular destinations recently hit by attacks, said Jose Luis ...

  Washington / AFP The European Union gave Belgium a barely 24-hour ultimatum on Sunday to say whether it can back an EU-Canada trade deal, warning otherwise it will cancel a summit to sign the accord with Ottawa. In an embarrassment for the 28-nation EU, Belgium has so far been unable to sign up to the CETA trade deal because ...

  Bloomberg Time Warner Inc. and AT&T Inc. have survived the evolution of color TV and cable over the decades. Now they’re merging to adapt to the latest technological shifts: smartphones and streaming. More consumers are getting their entertainment online from Netflix Inc. and watching on iPhones instead of TVs. That’s putting pressure on traditional entertainment companies and pay-TV providers. ...