Bloomberg Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) is preparing to cut more than 1 billion pounds ($1.25 billion) of annual operating costs by eliminating jobs and closing branches as it seeks to bolster profitability, said a person with knowledge of the plans. While the Edinburgh-based lender probably won’t reveal a headline figure for role reductions, senior executives have determined …

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, which last month settled charges that it helped investors launder money through its business in Moscow, remains under scrutiny in Russia over its tax practices. “As part of an ongoing routine audit, Deutsche Bank is working with Russian tax authorities on matters relating to standard business operations that follow normal industry practice,” the Frankfurt-based lender …

  Bloomberg Indonesian business tycoon Tahir is keen to gain control of PT Bank Permata, a larger rival to his PT Bank Mayapada International, as he seeks to put his lender in the ranks of the nation’s biggest banks. Tahir’s Mayapada Group wants to buy the 90 percent of Permata that is owned by Standard Chartered Plc and PT Astra …

  Bloomberg In 2014, billionaire Jack Ma, founder of online retail giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., declared his ambition to make China’s hospitals better, drugs cheaper and people healthier. Others in China’s tech universe were becoming equally bullish on health care, and that year alone, investment in the internet health sector surged about sevenfold to $1.4 billion. Since then, billionaire …

  BEIJING / AP China’s auto sales shrank in January following a sales tax increase, an industry group reported on Monday. Sales in the world’s biggest auto market declined 1.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.2 million, compared to December’s 9.1 percent expansion, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Total vehicle sales, including trucks and buses, rose …

  Bloomberg India’s inflation grew at its slowest pace on record even as the central bank unexpectedly held interest rates in its monetary policy review last week. Consumer prices rose 3.17 percent in January from a year earlier, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement in New Delhi on Monday. That’s slower than the 3.24 percent median estimate in a …

  Bloomberg Infosys Ltd.’s co-founder and former chairman Narayana Murthy is calling off his fight with the board, saying the company will deal with the questions about corporate governance that have been raised. Billionaire Murthy and several other founders had raised questions about the management of Asia’s second-largest IT services company, citing a spike in compensation for Chief Executive Officer …

  Bloomberg The strength in exports that fueled a fourth straight quarter of economic growth in Japan underscores just how important it is for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to ease trade tensions with the Trump administration. Net shipments abroad added 0.2 percentage point to gross domestic product in the three months through December, while consumption in Japan was flat as …

  Bloomberg Germany’s economy is running at full speed, yet some of its biggest companies are far from getting carried away about the future. Thyssenkrupp AG last week became the latest of the country’s top firms to intertwine words of caution in what’s shaping up to be a strong earnings season, joining peers like Siemens AG in warning against global …

  Bloomberg Buying your sweetheart a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates could be cheaper this year thanks to booming cocoa supplies. Growers are collecting bigger harvests in Latin America and in West Africa, which accounts for about 70 percent of global production. The output gains have pushed cocoa futures to the lowest since 2008, cutting costs for companies including Mondelez …