Bloomberg Access Bank Plc is predicting that the level of troubled loans in Nigeria will continue to climb before an economic recovery in the second half of the year brings relief to the country’s lenders. “Across the entire industry you’ll see an uptick in non-performing loan ratios,” Chief Executive Officer Herbert Wigwe said in an interview in Lagos, the …

  Bloomberg Indian budget airline SpiceJet Ltd. is poised to order at least 92 Boeing Co. 737 jetliners as the carrier plots rapid expansion in the world’s fastest growing aerospace market. The transaction, which would more than double SpiceJet’s 40-plane fleet, may be closed within weeks after lengthy talks that pitted Boeing against rival Airbus Group SE, people with direct …

  Bloomberg Aggressive growth strategies at Europe’s leading discount carriers are poised to overthrow the region’s established airline order. Ryanair Holdings Plc, already Europe’s top low-cost operator, boosted its passenger tally 15 percent to 117 million in 2016, a figure that’s set to give it the biggest annual tally of any carrier in the region, ahead of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, …

  MEXICO CITY / AP A consortium led by Mexico’s Carso infrastructure and construction company has won a $4 billion contract to build the main terminal building at Mexico City’s new airport. The $9.2-billion project will quadruple the current airport’s capacity to 120 million passengers per year. Mexican builder ICA Constructora de Infraestructura will join nine firms, some Spanish, in …

  Bloomberg Iridium Communications Inc. needs SpaceX to get it right this time. Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is set to launch 10 Iridium communications satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Monday, marking the company’s first return to flight since a Falcon 9 rocket blew up on a Florida launch pad in September. The satellites are …

  DPA A mobile game, of all things, is providing dementia researchers with huge amounts of data. Called Sea Hero Quest, it’s helping them understand how our brains navigate space and is being used to create a benchmark for early detection of dementia, one of the first symptoms of which is the loss of navigational skills. Participants in the project …

  DPA Derek Ndinteh may be sitting in a windowless tiny office at one of South Africa’s less-well-known universities writing out an application for research funding, but this brilliant 40-year-old from Cameroon is confident. “I will be the first black Nobel laureate in chemistry,” says the researcher at the University of Johannesburg – “UJ” to its students. The role of …

  BEIRUT / Reuters Lebanon intends to restart its first oil and gas licensing round after a three-year delay, the energy minister said, hoping to kick-start the development of a hydrocarbon industry stalled by national political paralysis. In its first sitting since being formed in December, Lebanon’s new cabinet passed two decrees defining the blocks and specifying conditions for production …

  Reuters Iran has sold more than 13 million barrels of oil that it had long held on tankers at sea, capitalising on an OPEC output cut deal from which it is exempted to regain market share and court new buyers, according to industry sources and data. In the past three months, Tehran has sold almost half the oil it …

  Reuters Winter temperatures in North Asia will swing to unusually cold from relatively mild in the coming weeks, lifting the demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG) and thermal coal as regional power stations ramp up to meet the increased heating needs. January tends to be the coldest month of the year in the northern hemisphere, and a drop to …