Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc posted another year of slower passenger growth as the discount carrier’s battle with unions, bad weather and industrywide air-traffic-control strikes took a toll. Passenger numbers for the 12 months through December rose 8 percent to 139.2 million tickets sold, Ryanair said. Even with the addition of Austria’s Laudamotion, the increase was smaller than 2017’s 10 percent ...

Bloomberg Next Plc shares rose after surprisingly robust Christmas retail figures cheered investors who were fearing the worst after months of gloom in the sector. Strong sales in the weeks before the holiday helped make up for disappointing results in November, the UK clothing retailer said, a result that was better than some analysts anticipated. At the same time, the ...

Bloomberg European natural gas prices look set to fall for the first time in four years in 2019 as buyers keep a close eye on flows from Russia that reached a record last year. With a healthy amount of fuel in storage after a mild start to this winter, the outlook is bearish. That’s being exacerbated by an expected increase ...

Bloomberg Venezuela, once Latin America’s largest oil exporter, ended 2018 with a whimper as overseas sales dropped to the lowest in nearly three decades. Home to the world’s biggest crude reserves, the country exported 1.245 million barrels a day last year, the lowest since 1990, as production tumbles amid an economic and humanitarian crisis. Financial sanctions imposed by the US ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe has reached flexible payment arrangements with some gasoline importers that will ensure it stabilises supplies amid a forei- gn-currency shortage that threatens economic growth. The government has struck a deal with a unit of Trafigura Beheer BV and Independent Petroleum Group (IPG) of Kuwait Ltd to extend payment periods for gasoline supplies to as many as six months ...

Bloomberg The new head of Brazil’s state-controlled oil company criticised its history of government interference and vowed to pursue policies that will boost profit, echoing a wider pledge by President Jair Bolsonaro to reduce the state’s role in Latin America’s largest economy. Roberto Castello Branco, who was sworn in as chief executive officer of Petrobras, said he was “revolted” by ...

Bloomberg The US hasn’t done enough to counter the use of technology transfers and supply chain infiltration from countries like China, leading to a grave national security risk, according to two US senators. To guard against state-sponsored technology theft and risks to supply chains that provide technology to US consumers, Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio have proposed legislation requiring ...

Bloomberg China’s cyberspace police have ordered Baidu Inc and Sohu.com Ltd to suspend a plethora of news services for a week, kicking off an online clean-up campaign with two of the country’s biggest internet corporations. The Cyberspace Administration of China announced it was starting a six-month effort to eradicate “vulgar” information” from a plethora of online media, including messaging services ...

Bloomberg Carlos Ghosn will finally see the inside of a Japanese court room next week, almost two months after his arrest on financial crimes. The embattled car titan will attend a hearing of the Tokyo district court on January 8, according to his chief lawyer, Motonari Otsuru. The session was called after Ghosn’s legal team requested an explanation on why ...

Bloomberg The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it’s on track to meet its official March 31 deadline to provide electricity connections to every home, saying a December 31 goal promoted publicly by the power ministry was only an “internal target.” The ministry said in a statement that it aimed to achieve full electrification by year-end “so that ...