Bloomberg British Airways owner IAG SA will begin offering cut-price inter-continental flights from June using a new airline to be branded ‘Level’ that could operate more than 30 aircraft. The startup will initially connect Barcelona with Los Angeles and Oakland in California, the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, with tickets priced from 99 ...

  Bloomberg Marks & Spencer Group Plc (M&S) is severing ties to financial public-relations adviser Finsbury at the end of March as the London-based retailer seeks to cut costs. M&S’s internal press-relations team will take over responsibility for the work Finsbury has been carrying out since the WPP Plc-owned agency was hired by former Chief Executive Officer Marc Bolland in ...

  NEW YORK / AP JC Penney listed for the first time the 138 locations it will shutter in the coming months as the retailer seeks to cut costs and improve its profitability. Like other department stores, JC Penney Co. is hurting as more people shop online instead of heading to the mall. The closures are part of the company’s ...

  Bloomberg A single-aisle passenger jet that is being built by the Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China is set for its first test flight by the end of next month, according to Philippe Petitcolin, chief executive officer of Safran SA, an aircraft engine maker. Any problems with taxi trials may alter the schedule, Petitcolin said in an interview in Paris. ...

  Bloomberg With the management and shareholders of one of Russia’s biggest regional lenders deep in unsuccessful talks with the central bank about how to save it from collapse last November, an obscure company in Dublin sold $60 million of bonds on its behalf. The amount wasn’t nearly enough to cover the estimated 97 billion ruble ($1.6 billion) hole in ...

  NEW YORK / AP Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan said the company could need several more months to resolve customer damage tied to its massive sales practices scandal, such as figuring out if people had trouble getting approved for other loans because of the fake accounts bank employees opened. Sloan reiterated what he has said since becoming CEO in ...

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reduced chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein’s annual compensation 27%, awarding him $22 million for 2016 after eliminating a long-term incentive award. Blankfein, 62, received $16 million in performance shares and a $4 million cash bonus, in addition to his $2 million salary, the New York-based firm said Friday in its annual proxy filing. Unlike ...

  LONDON / Reuters Former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond marked a return to investment banking in Britain with a Qatari-backed takeover of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, one of the oldest names in the City of London. Diamond, who left Barclays in 2012 during the Libor interest rate-rigging scandal, is making the move through his private equity firm Atlas Merchant Capital, ...

  Bloomberg The S&P 500 Index could reach 2,600 as the global economy improves and corporate earnings climb, said Keith Banks, president of Bank of America Corp.’s (BofA) US Trust unit. “It’s natural to get nervous when you’ve seen the run that we’ve seen, but what I would bring things back to are underlying fundamentals,” Banks said in an interview ...

  DOHA / Reuters Qatar’s central bank said that it raised its overnight lending rate by 25 basis points to 5.0 percent after the U.S. Federal Reserve tightened policy by a similar margin. The central bank also increased its overnight deposit rate by 25 bps to 1.25 percent. However, the central bank reduced banks’ reserve requirement — the amount of ...