Bloomberg Barefoot and in pajamas, Milan Jovanovic watched flames engulf his Belgrade house after a Molotov cocktail crashed through a window in an attack before dawn. He and his wife survived only because she smelled the smoke. “They nearly burned us alive,” said Jovanovic, a 68-year-old investigative journalist who writes about government corruption. Jovanovic is the latest journalist in Serbia ...

Bloomberg The City of London is getting a last-minute break from politicians across the European Union intent on averting chaos in financial markets in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Countries including Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy and Sweden are readying national legislation that would help bankers continue to service the 18 trillion pounds ($23.4 trillion) of derivatives contracts that ...

Bloomberg India will inject 482 billion rupees ($6.8 billion) into government-controlled lenders to help them meet tighter regulatory requirements and to boost credit growth. The fund infusion will ensure that capital ratios for all state-run lenders are above the regulatory requirement and will help Allahabad Bank and Corporation Bank exit a so-called Prompt Corrective Action plan, Rajeev Kumar, secretary at ...

Bloomberg China’s central bank announced the first of a new kind of market operation which aims to encourage financial institutions to issue perpetual bonds to boost their capital. The People’s Bank of China swapped 1.5 billion yuan ($223 million) of 1-year central bank bills for perpetual bonds with a coupon of 2.45 percent, according to a statement on its website ...

Bloomberg It’s not every day that a bank gets thrown out of a country. But, Estonia took the extraordinary step of telling Danske Bank A/S to get out. Within two hours, Danske did the country’s financial watchdog one better: the harassed Danish lender annou- nced a retreat from the entire Baltic region as well as Russia. It’s the latest dramatic ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG plans to start rebuilding its South African workforce just months after scaling back staff and cutting costs as part of a global restructuring. “The hiring we’re currently pursuing is geared towards enhancing the areas where we have global and local strengths, such as fixed income,” South Africa Chief Executive Officer Muneer Ismail said in an interview. ...

Bloomberg Alberta is preparing a giant crude-by-rail operation to help its oil-sands producers cope with a pipeline crunch, and it expects a big profit from the venture. The Canadian province, which holds the world’s third-largest crude reserves, plans to net C$2.2 billion ($1.7 billion) after investing C$3.7 billion to lease tank cars and buy service from rail providers, generating C$5.9 ...

Bloomberg America’s surging shale oil production shows little sign of abating, despite industrywide spending cuts, as explorers learn to do more with less. Almost all the independent producers have reduced their budgets for 2019, but many still expect to deliver double-digit growth in production this year, fourth-quarter earnings reports show. Growth is slowing but still strong: the US will add ...

Bloomberg Brexit is threatening to spoil the appeal of the UK’s crude in the world’s biggest regional oil market. Seoul-based SK Innovation Co., an Asian buyer of North Sea Forties crude, sees a lower probability of purchases if the UK and South Korea don’t roll over an existing trade deal before Brexit. That’s after British Business Secretary Greg Clark admitted ...

Bloomberg The US is asking China to keep the value of the yuan stable as part of trade negotiations between the world’s two largest economies, a move aimed at neutralising any effort by Beijing to devalue its currency to counter American tariffs, people familiar with the ongoing talks said. Officials from the two countries are discussing how to address currency ...