Bloomberg Anthem Inc. failed to overturn a court ruling that blocked its planned takeover of rival Cigna Corp., capping a nearly two-year battle to complete a combination of two of the biggest health insurers in the US. The federal appeals panel in Washington upheld a lower court ruling by a 2-1 vote. The court rejected Anthem’s key argument, that ...

  Bloomberg Novo Nordisk A/S has agreed to settle a US probe of its marketing of diabetes drugs that allegedly included disguising salespeople as medical educators and paying kickbacks to persuade doctors to prescribe its medicines. The allegations were disclosed when a whistle-blower lawsuit was unsealed by a judge. The US Justice Department investigation, which began in 2011, focused on ...

  Bloomberg Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, the fate of another $2 billion from the wreckage of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is about to be determined. The failed New York investment bank is seeking to recoup the cash from one of its old derivatives trading partners, Citigroup Inc. In a trial that started this week in Manhattan ...

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. cut off billions of dollars in payments to Qualcomm Inc., turning a contract dispute into what one analyst called an “all-out war” that forced the chip supplier to slash forecasts given only days ago. The world’s largest publicly-traded technology company and one of the main suppliers of components to the iPhone, its most important product, have ...

  Bloomberg Cyberattacks involving ransomware — in which criminals use malicious software to encrypt a users’ data and then extort money to unencrypt it — increased 50 percent in 2016, according to a report from Verizon Communications Inc. And criminals increasingly shifted from going after individual consumers to attacking vulnerable organizations and businesses, the report said. Government organizations were the ...

  ABU DHABI / WAM With the inauguration of the high-tech jack-up rig Al Lulu, National Drilling Company (NDC), an Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Group company, has celebrated the completion of its AED6 billion acquisition of nine state-of-the-art offshore rigs. The celebration, which took place in the Hamriyah Free Zone in Sharjah on Thursday, in the presence of ...

  PARIS / Reuters OPEC wants oil inventories to decline further and is working to ensure a policy-setting meeting in May reaches consensus, the group’s secretary-general said on Thursday in comments pointing to an extension of a global supply cut. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and other producers originally agreed to curb production by 1.8 million barrels ...

  DUBAI / WAM DP World has handled 16.4 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) across its global portfolio of container terminals in the first quarter of 2017, with gross container volumes growing by 5.7% year-on-year on a reported basis, and 5.0% on a like-for-like basis, well ahead of the industry estimate of 2.6% throughput growth for Q1 2017. The first ...

  DUBAI / WAM The UAE continues its deep commitment and involvement in the Kimberley Process, KP, following its successful tenure as KP Chair in 2016. Set up as a joint initiative between the Ministry of Economy and DMCC, the aim of the UAE Kimberley Process Taskforce is to support and reinforce multilateral cooperation regarding the import, export, and transit ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business The online shopping space in the UAE has been blooming and the competition with traditional retailers is eminent. The going, often gets tough with the low margins, increase in fierce competition and customer retention and acquisition. There are cloud communication companies like Knowlarity, which come in to save the day. Pioneering ecommerce stores are harnessing ...