Bloomberg Next Plc shares rose after surprisingly robust Christmas retail figures cheered investors who were fearing the worst after months of gloom in the sector. Strong sales in the weeks before the holiday helped make up for disappointing results in November, the UK clothing retailer said, a result that was better than some analysts anticipated. At the same time, the …

Bloomberg European natural gas prices look set to fall for the first time in four years in 2019 as buyers keep a close eye on flows from Russia that reached a record last year. With a healthy amount of fuel in storage after a mild start to this winter, the outlook is bearish. That’s being exacerbated by an expected increase …

Bloomberg Venezuela, once Latin America’s largest oil exporter, ended 2018 with a whimper as overseas sales dropped to the lowest in nearly three decades. Home to the world’s biggest crude reserves, the country exported 1.245 million barrels a day last year, the lowest since 1990, as production tumbles amid an economic and humanitarian crisis. Financial sanctions imposed by the US …

Bloomberg Zimbabwe has reached flexible payment arrangements with some gasoline importers that will ensure it stabilises supplies amid a forei- gn-currency shortage that threatens economic growth. The government has struck a deal with a unit of Trafigura Beheer BV and Independent Petroleum Group (IPG) of Kuwait Ltd to extend payment periods for gasoline supplies to as many as six months …

Bloomberg The new head of Brazil’s state-controlled oil company criticised its history of government interference and vowed to pursue policies that will boost profit, echoing a wider pledge by President Jair Bolsonaro to reduce the state’s role in Latin America’s largest economy. Roberto Castello Branco, who was sworn in as chief executive officer of Petrobras, said he was “revolted” by …

Bloomberg As he browsed digital store shelves last month in search of an aromatherapy diffuser, entrepreneur David Berger had a single requirement for his wife’s Christmas gift: It had to work with Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa software. “She’s really into making the house smell beautiful, and I’m really into Alexa,” says Berger who lives in Weston, Connecticut. “So this is a …

Bloomberg Largan Precision Co., which supplies camera lenses to Apple Inc, said revenue in December fell by a third amid weakening appetite for iPhones in China. Sales dropped 33.9 percent from a year to NT$3.23 billion ($104.9 million), and were in line with Largan’s estimates, a company spokeswoman said on Saturday. The company, which also makes lenses for Huawei Technologies …

Bloomberg Last year, Microsoft Corp’s Azure security team detected suspicious activity in the cloud computing usage of a large retailer: One of the company’s administrators, who usually logs on from New York, was trying to gain entry from Romania. And no, the admin wasn’t on vacation. A hacker had broken in. Microsoft quickly alerted its customer, and the attack was …

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signalled the central bank could pause interest-rate increases if the US economy weakened and pledged he will stay at his post even if President Donald Trump presses him to resign. Invoking events of 2016, when the Fed held rates unchanged through most of the year amid financial market turmoil spurred by concerns over slower …

Bloomberg Polish central bank Governor Adam Glapinski is undergoing “routine” questioning by prosecutors in relation to a bribery scandal that led to the arrest of the country’s banking watchdog chairman. The latest in a string of central bankers from emerging Europe becoming involved in legal probes, Glapinski has rebuffed calls to step down from opposition parties that are demanding a …