Bloomberg Food importers from Africa to Asia are scrambling for dollars to pay their bills as a surge in the US currency drives prices even higher for countries already facing a historic global food crisis. In Ghana, importers are warning about shortages in the run up to Christmas. Thousands of containers loaded with food recently piled up at ports in …

  Bloomberg Kroger Co agreed to buy Albertsons Cos in a deal with an enterprise value of $24.6 billion that would create a US grocery giant with almost 5,000 stores and annual revenue of about $200 billion. Investors will receive $34.10 for each share in Albertsons, which includes a special dividend, the companies said in a statement. That reflects a …

Bloomberg Pilots at Deutsche Lufthansa AG’s discount carrier will strike for 72 hours after Germany’s Vereinigung Cockpit union called Eurowings’ latest offer “completely insufficient.” The current dispute centers “exclusively” around a reduction of pilot workload and not pay for cockpit staff, according to a statement issued by the union. The employees “have no choice but to express their displeasure about …

  Bloomberg Delta Air Lines Inc. says it’s not interested in buying back shares anytime soon, even though pandemic-related restrictions have finally ended. “Our sole priority at Delta is to make sure that any excess cash that we’re generating is used to pay down debt, and we acquired a meaningful amount of debt during the pandemic,” Chief Executive Officer Ed …

  Bloomberg Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing Co rises the most in three months after the company issued an outlook for profit and sales for the current fiscal year ahead of analysts’ projections. Asia’s largest retailer is forecasting a record profit for the year ending August 2023, thanks to improving demand for its cheap casual apparel in Japan and a weaker …

  Bloomberg Hong Kong International Airport’s September passenger traffic volume increased by 133% from a year earlier, after authorities scrapped some of the city’s harshest travel restrictions, including requirements for hotel quarantine and a pre-boarding Covid test. Passenger throughput climbed to 525,000, 10% higher than in August. The growth was boosted by visitors to and from Southeast Asia, the Airport …

  Bloomberg Giving out treats this Halloween will be a lot more expensive than usual. The cost of candy and chewing gum jumped 13.1% in September from last year, the most ever, according to US inflation data. This comes just before what’s arguably candy’s most important holiday — Halloween. The culprit is expensive sugar. US refined sugar prices have soared …

  Bloomberg The Indian currency will withstand the recent strengthening of the dollar, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, reiterating a central bank forecast that the South Asian economy will grow at 7% in the year to March, 2023. “The Indian rupee has performed much better than many other emerging market currencies,” Sitharaman said at a media briefing in Washington DC. …

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. set aside an additional $2 billion to resolve a variety of legacy regulatory and legal woes as Chief Executive Officer Charlie Scharf continues wrestling with the costly fallout from scandals he was hired to resolve. The charge hampered a third quarter that was better than expected on some metrics. Net interest income, for example, …

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported its highest quarterly net interest income ever and raised its guidance for the year as the biggest US bank reaps rewards from the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hikes. The firm generated $17.6 billion in third-quarter NII, the money it earns on loans minus what it pays out for deposits. Expenses also came in lower …