Hong Kong / AFP HSBC shares rallied on Monday in a positive response to quarterly profit results after the British banking giant underwent a radical cost-cutting exercise. In the three months to September its adjusted pre-tax profit — which strips out one-off items and unfavourable currency movements — rose seven percent from a year earlier to $5.59 billion, beating …

  Bloomberg Tesco Bank, the lending arm of the UK’s biggest grocer, said it suspended online transactions after about 20,000 customers had money fraudulently taken from their accounts. About 40,000 of the bank’s 136,000 checking account holders experienced suspicious transactions over the weekend, Tesco Bank Chief Executive Officer Benny Higgins told BBC Radio 4’s Today program. About half of those …

  Sydney / AFP Australian banking giant Westpac posted a seven percent slide in annual net profit on Monday on the back of market headwinds and impairment charges but said it was well positioned with a strong balance sheet. Westpac’s Aus$7.45 billion (US$5.72 billion) result in the year to September 30 rounded out annual reporting from three of the nation’s …

  TOKYO / AP Japanese telecommunications and internet company SoftBank Group Corp., which has acquired British chipmaker ARM Holdings for about $30 billion, reported on Monday that its July-September profit more than doubled from the same period the previous year. Tokyo-based Softbank’s fiscal second quarter profit totaled 528.6 billion yen ($5.1 billion), up from 258.6 billion yen last year, boosted …

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, seeking to shore up capital, has said it wants to sell or spin off German retail-banking unit Postbank. Standing in the way: bonds known as CoCos. Blame it on conflicting accounting rules. While Deutsche Bank has taken a multi-billion-euro writedown for Postbank in accounts based on international standards, it hasn’t done so on its income …

  CUSHING / AP A magnitude 5.0 earthquake centered near one of the world’s key oil hubs brought down building facades and shattered windows in a central Oklahoma city, rendering century-old buildings unsafe and raising concerns about key infrastructure. Cushing Assistant City Manager Jeremy Frazier told a news conference late on Sunday that a few minor injuries were reported. He …

  HANOI / AP Vietnam and Ireland agreed on Monday to increase their cooperation in education, renewable energy, information technology and health care, during a visit to the Southeast Asian country by Irish President Michael Higgins. Higgins said he and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang discussed how the two countries can serve as a bridge for developing relations with the …

  Bloomberg McDonald’s Corp., which replaced its CEO last year with the hope of turning around sales, plans to significantly increase its investment in digital endeavors, inclu- ding self-serve kiosks and a mobile-ordering application. The investment marks a “very significant acceleration” from current levels, Jim Sappington, executive vice president of operations and technology systems, said in an interview. He declined …

  Wiesbaden / AFP Industrial firms in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, saw an unexpected fall in new orders in September, official data showed on Monday, pointing to weaker performance in the months ahead. Companies saw order books shrink by 0.6 percent compared with August, correcting for price, seasonal and calendar effects, the federal statistics office Destatis said in preliminary figures. …

  Bloomberg EU regulators are taking a closer look at an investment deal between Britain and Japanese auto maker Nissan that keeps production of two key models in the UK despite Brexit. “We have seen press reports regarding this issue. As a result, the Commission at services level is in contact with the UK authorities,” an EU spokesman said on …