BLOOMBERG Australia’s securities regulator is set to start civil legal proceedings against National Australia Bank Ltd. for allegedly manipulating the nation’s benchmark swap rate, according to a person familiar with the matter. It will be the third such legal action in a more-than three-year investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission into alleged manipulation of the bank-bill swap …

  Bloomberg Japan for years has been renowned for having the world’s largest government debt load. No longer. That’s if you consider how the effective public borrowing burden is plunging — by one estimate as much as the equivalent of 15 percentage points of gross domestic product a year, putting it on track toward a more manageable level. Accounting for …

  Taipei / AFP Reducing errors made during surgery, bringing school books to life, enabling us to browse shops from the comfort of home — virtual reality is not just about gaming, it will change our lives, according to some tech leaders. “VR” is the buzz industry at Asia’s largest tech fair, Computex, being held in Taiwan’s capital Taipei this …

  Bloomberg For more than a century, buyers and sellers shouted out orders for Darjeeling tea at auctions in India before they were shipped to high-end purveyors in Europe, Japan and the US. Now, the prized black tea is poised to enter the digital age, with Darjeeling trade moving online from June. India harvested 1.19 billion kilograms of leaves in …

  RITIKA SHARMA / Emirates Business Her Excellency Sara Al Madani is a well-known fashion designer, entrepreneur and founder of Rouge Couture fashion label and is best known for the fact that she stated working at an age of 15. In 2014 she was selected by his Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan Al Qassimi as a board member at Sharjah Chamber …

  Our Correspondent / EMIRATES BUSINESS Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world’s 20 leading pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Ingelheim, Germany, Boehringer Ingelheim operates globally through 145 affiliates and a total of some 47,500 employees. The focus of the family-owned company, founded in 1885, is on researching, developing, manufacturing and marketing new medications of high therapeutic value for human and …

  DUBAI / WAM Emirates NBD has announced that it will invest AED 500 million over the next three years towards digital innovation and multichannel transformation of its processes, products and services. The bank also revealed plans to launch the UAE’s first digital bank targeted at millennials. A first-of-its-kind ‘by the customer, for the customer’ initiative using digitisation and social …

  Dubai / WAM Emirates NBD announced that it will invest AED 500 million over the next three years towards digital innovation and multichannel transformation of its processes, products and services. The bank also revealed plans to launch the UAE’s first digital bank targeted at millennials. A first-of-its-kind ‘by the customer, for the customer’ initiative using digitisation and social input as …

  Abu Dhabi / WAM Abu Dhabi General Services Company, Musanada, has completed 83 percent of the new Abu Dhabi-Dubai highway, while work is progressing as planned in accordance with the highest standards to deliver the project by the end of this year. The execution of the new highway has followed a detailed study of the conditions and volume of daily …

  Vienna / WAM Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil and gas investment company, International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) and the Austrian state holding company, Osterreichische Bundes- und Industriebeteiligungen GmbH (OBIB) on Wednesday agreed to extend their cooperation as the two core shareholders of the Austrian oil and gas company, OMV Aktiengesellschaft (“OMV”). The announcement comes after the conclusion of successful talks in …