AFP The Little England look has suddenly become fashionable. Cricket jumpers, brogues, boating blazers and even neo-Morris men popped up on the recent Paris catwalk. Nor is fashion’s new-found anglophilia confined to the upper classes. Sweatpants, parkas, tartan and charity shop suits were everywhere as next year’s spring-summer menswear shows hit the runways. In what could be interpreted as ...

  AFP A Qatari investment fund, already owner of the Italian Valentino label, will take over French luxury fashion house Balmain, which has become a favourite of film stars, the advisor for the acquisition announced. “After completing this transaction, Mayhoola for Investments will hold 100 percent of Balmain’s capital,” Bucephale Finance, specialists in mergers and acquisitions, said in a statement ...

  AFP Top trends from the Milan menswear Spring-Summer 2017 fashion shows, which concluded recently: LET’S PARTY The future of exclusively menswear catwalk shows is in doubt but the cult of the ‘see and be seen party’ is alive and well. Highlights this time included Dsquared2 duo Dean and Dan Caten’s bash in their own Ceresio restaurant, which boasts spectacular ...

  Tokyo / Bloomberg Japanese companies, which have embarked on a $210 billion global acquisition spree over the past three years, are getting a surprise bargain out of Brexit. The yen soared to the highest in more than two years, boosting local firms’ purchasing power for deals abroad and potentially saving them hundreds of millions of dollars on purchases they’ve ...

  Beijing / Bloomberg Chinese authorities will require Baidu Inc. and other search engines to report banned content and verify advertisers’ qualifications in its latest attempt at Internet regulation. Under rules to take effect Aug. 1, search engines operating in the country will be prohibited from providing banned information in various formats including links, summaries, cached pages, associative words, related ...

  Bangkok / Tribune News Servicve Thai exports slipped for a second straight month in May, with the low value attributed to a slowdown in the global economy and low prices for farm products and oil. The Commerce Ministry said that exports fell 4.4% year-on-year in May to US$17.6 billion, with imports edging up 0.5% last month to $16 billion. ...

  Sydney / AFP A group of kayakers paddled to a tiny beach outside the Australian prime minister’s Sydney harbourside home on Saturday to call for action on climate change ahead of next weekend’s election. Protester Joseph Sikulu said he felt that the issue had dropped off the agenda ahead of the July 2 polls in which conservative Prime Minister ...

  Shanghai / Bloomberg China’s central bank will study shadow banking activities at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. as it tries to ensure a fair environment exists for competition in the industry, Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said. Alibaba engages in activities that fall under the Financial Stability Board’s definition of shadow banking and are subject to different capital requirements than traditional banks, ...

  Bloomberg Listen at the doors of two major gatherings of the world’s central bankers in Switzerland and Portugal next week, and one might hear little but the sound of forecasts being shredded. The world’s monetary guardians will gather at the Bank for International Settlements’ annual meeting in Basel over the weekend, and at the European Central Bank’s yearly policy ...

  Bloomberg Italian and Spanish lenders were the biggest participants in the European Central Bank’s latest new loan programme, increasing their net borrowings by more than 25 billion euros (US$28 billion). Intesa Sanpaolo SpA said it increased borrowings by about 8 billion euros in the first of four targeted longer-term refinancing operations after paying back loans under a previous program, ...