Reuters Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco wants to expand globally and is looking at potential joint ventures in several countries, including Indonesia, India, the United States, Vietnam and China, chief executive Amin Nasser said. “We are looking at the current market status that, even though challenging, is an excellent opportunity for growth,” he told reporters during a rare ...

  Bloomberg U.K. industrial production grew less than forecast in March as manufacturing barely rose and oil and gas output shrank. Output rose 0.3 percent, less than the 0.5 percent gain predicted in a Bloomberg survey of economists, figures from the Office for National Statistics published on Wednesday show. It followed a 0.2 percent decline in February. Factories increased production ...

  Bloomberg Norway’s government boosted the amount of oil money it will spend this year to a record, dipping deeper into its sovereign wealth fund to ward off a recession. The government will use 205.6 billion kroner ($25 billion) of its oil wealth, up from the 195.2 billion kroner it estimated in October, according to the budget released in Oslo ...

  Bloomberg The European Union blocked CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.’s bid to create the U.K.’s biggest mobile carrier, the latest setback to consolidation that telecommunications operators say they need to funnel money into new networks. Hutchison’s plan to buy Telefonica SA’s U.K. mobile-phone business for as much as 10.25 billion pounds ($14.8 billion) and merge it with its Three unit ...

  Bloomberg The trend for ultra-long European bond sales is gathering pace. Spain is the latest euro-region sovereign to sell 50-year bonds, with an issue via banks that’s likely to price on Wednesday. It follows half-century deals last month from France and Belgium as countries take advantage of historically low interest rates to issue ultra-long debt. Italy’s debt agency said ...

  Bloomberg Forget for a minute that the flower industry sells beauty and fragrance. Underneath its elegance is a business as cutthroat as Game of Thrones with mulch. Take the case of the Candy Bouquet, a pretty, magenta-and-yellow flower that resembles a petunia. It was developed by a German grower, WesthoffVertriebsgesellschaftMBH, that says it was on the verge of selling ...

  Bloomberg Big oil is dipping a few more toes into clean energy. Exxon Mobil Corp. is partnering with a company to capture carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. Total SA, the French oil supermajor, announced a $1.1 billion deal Monday to buy the battery maker Saft Groupe SA, complementing its 2011 purchase of a majority stake in the solar-panel maker ...

  Bloomberg Last week’s $1.3 billion rout in exchange-traded funds focused on emerging markets engulfed even Mexico, where a stellar earnings season was overshadowed by concern that global growth is slowing. Traders pulled $155.2 million from the nation’s flagship iShares MSCI Mexico Capped ETF in the five-day period ending May 6, the most among major developing nations after China, according ...

  Bloomberg Argentina’s Grupo Supervielle SA, controller of lender Banco Supervielle SA, is seeking to raise about $190 million in what is set to be the country’s first initial public offering since President Mauricio Macri took office. The bank expects to sell American depositary receipts for $11 to $13 each and issue common shares in Argentina for $2.20 to $2.60 ...

  Bloomberg A bad start to the year for Canadian natural gas producers is getting worse after wildfires in northern Alberta knocked out oil-sands operations that represent a key source of demand. Spot gas prices in Western Canada have been cut by more than half after oil-sands developers curtailed about 40 percent of their supply, reducing the amount of gas ...