Bloomberg In the Ivory Coast, Standard Chartered Plc may have found its template for the future of banking. Didier Drogba, the retired Ivorian soccer star, was drafted as a “digital bank ambassador” on social media. Fifteen months later, more than 18,000 of his compatriots have signed up for digital-only accounts, outstripping the London-based lender’s early targets. Ivory Coast is just ...

Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc’s Bank of Scotland unit was fined $58 million by UK’s finance regulator over a scandal at the bank’s Reading division that siphoned millions from failing businesses a decade ago. The company “failed to alert the regulator and the police about suspicions of fraud at its Reading branch when those suspicions first became apparent,” the Financial ...

Bloomberg The union for American Airlines Group pilots is redoubling its push for time in a Boeing 737 Max simulator, saying aviators should be given access before the grounded plane returns to service. Dan Carey, a veteran American pilot and head of the Allied Pilots Association (APA), appealed to Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg a day after testifying before ...

Bloomberg Airlines worldwide are diverting flights away from southern Iran, lengthening travel times, after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an edict barring American operators from the region amid escalating tensions with the Persian Gulf country. Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Dutch carrier KLM and Qantas Airways Ltd of Australia are among carriers re-routing long-haul services to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, ...

Bloomberg A closely watched researcher has cut its estimate of Amazon.com Inc’s share of the US e-commerce market after incorporating new figures from the company. EMarketer Inc, among the most widely cited sources for estimates of US online retail sales, says it now expects Amazon to account for 37.7 percent of online commerce this year, down from a prior estimate ...

Bloomberg Shake Shack is staying away from vegan burgers, at least for now. The fast-food chain, known for its Pat LaFrieda beef and fries, is watching the vegan-burger trend that’s been turbocharged by Beyond Meat Inc’s massive post-IPO stock rally. But Shake Shack isn’t ready to get on board, according to CEO Randy Garutti. First, the chain, which made its name ...

Bloomberg Maybe American kids will only have to live through one Christmas without Toys ‘R’ Us. About a year after shuttering US operations, the remnant of the defunct toy chain is set to return this holiday season by opening about a half dozen US stores and an e-commerce site, according to people familiar with the matter. Richard Barry, a former ...

GENEVA / WAM The number of people fleeing war, persecution, and conflict exceeded 70 million in 2018. This is the highest level that UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has seen in its almost 70 years. Data from UNHCR’s annual Global Trends report, released on Wednesday, shows almost 70.8 million people are now forcibly displaced. To put this in perspective, this ...

Bloomberg Global oil demand growth is slowing. That is the view of all three major oil forecasting organisations, who have cut their assessments for what they expect in terms of an increase in crude consumption this year. The latest outlooks from the International Energy Agency, the US Energy Information Administration and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) all show ...

DUBAI / WAM Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, TRA Director-General, said that the launch of Microsoft cloud services in the UAE confirms the country’s leading role in the ICT sector and as one of the world’s leading hubs of digital transformation in all sectors. In a statement, on the launch of Microsoft cloud services in UAE, Al Mansoori said that the ...