Bloomberg Crude leapt to its highest level in almost six months after the Trump administration said it wouldn’t renew Iran oil waivers for China, India and other countries once they expire in May. Futures in London traded near $74 a barrel after jumping as much as 3.3 percent and reaching the highest since early November in anticipation of the statement …

DUBAI / Emirates Business The digital transformation of the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) small- and medium-sized enterprises and smart cities is driving regional software spend to top $6 billion, industry experts announced on Monday. The Mena region is a fast-growth market for digital transformation, as organisations look to gain greater business agility, better understand customer needs and trends, …

Bloomberg Most US equities fell in light volume as investors prepared for a deluge of earnings news. Oil jumped after the White House said it will scrap waivers that allow the purchase of some Iranian crude. The S&P 500 Index fluctuated between small gains and losses, hovering about 1 percent below its all-time high. Tesla Inc fell after an analyst …

Bloomberg India’s benchmark stock index posted its biggest drop in four months on concern that the spike in the price of oil, the nation’s biggest import, may dampen the outlook for Asia’s third-biggest economy. The rupee and sovereign bonds also weakened. The S&P BSE Sensex declined 1.3 percent to 38,645.18 at the close in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 …

Bloomberg A panel named by India’s central bank to study its capital structure is likely to identify excess reserves of up to 3 trillion rupees ($43 billion), or 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The view from BofAML lends itself to a debate over Reserve Bank of India’s reserves, with one school of …

Bloomberg Risky assets are reacting more strongly to hawkish monetary shocks from the Federal Reserve in recent years, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The reason, ironically, is that the Fed is losing its forecasting edge. The Fed’s relative predictive advantage versus private economists has declined in recent years as the higher quality and quantity of forecasters makes it harder …

Bloomberg About half of economists now expect the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) next policy move to be monetary easing, including three who see it coming this week, according to a Bloomberg survey. The other 45 of 48 economists surveyed said they expected the BOJ to leave its policy settings unchanged at a two-day meeting ending April 25. The number of …

Bloomberg An inverted Treasury yield curve is no longer a reliable signal of recession, and what matters more is the level of the curve, Bank of America (BofA) economists Ethan Harris and Aditya Bhave said in a note. The Federal Reserve is flirting with inversion probably because policy makers recognise its waning predictive power in a low-yield global environment, the …

Bloomberg China has named a new chief for Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC), world’s largest lender by assets, people with knowledge of matter said. Chen Siqing, chairman of Bank of China Ltd., was appointed as party secretary of Beijing-based ICBC at an internal meeting on Monday, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter …

Bloomberg South Africa’s central bank says it’s premature to claim victory in the war against inflation and sees price growth stabilising at 4.5 percent only by the end of 2021. While inflation has been inside the central bank’s target band of 3 percent to 6 percent for two years and was at the midpoint of this range in March, it’s …