Bloomberg Banco Santander SA Chairman Ana Botin said she expects growth in all of the lenders’ markets in 2017 after Spain’s largest bank reported fourth-quarter profit that beat estimates. The shares jumped. Net income rose to 1.6 billion euros ($1.72 billion) compared with 25 million euros a year earlier when profit was hit by charges, including provisions for the ...

  Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA said it’s considering a merger with Assicurazioni Generali SpA, a deal that would reshape Italy’s financial industry by combining its second-biggest bank with the largest insurer. “Possible industrial combinations with Assicurazioni Generali are currently being examined by the bank’s management,” Intesa said in a statement. “The bank is interested in industrial growth in the areas ...

  Duisburg / DPA Outside it may be grey and dusty, but in Wolfgang Mueller’s studio, the paintings of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) glow bright. That’s because they are all fresh. In the former upholsterer’s workshop in the German city of Duisburg, Mueller sits at a white grand piano and plays his own romantic compositions in an ode to his ...

  Wuppertal /DPA If you love riding trains, you’ve got to ride this one before you die: It’s the world’s only mass-transit rail system which has its wheels on the roof and a yawning gulf under the floor. Is it an aerial cableway or a rollercoaster? Neither. It’s a stately suspended monorail that carries 24 million passengers a year through ...

  Bloomberg “My God, this is going to be refreshing,” Kelcy Warren, the Texas billionaire behind the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, said days after Donald Trump swept to victory. As the industry digests the newly elected president’s push to get two stalled pipeline projects moving again — with some caveats — oil and natural gas producers are preparing for even ...

  Bloomberg Toshiba Corp., already reeling from a crisis at its nuclear business that sent its market value down by almost half, is seeking help from one of the world’s biggest buyers of LNG to avoid billions of dollars in potential losses if it can’t sell American gas. Toshiba is working with Japan’s Jera Co. to help it find buyers ...

  Reuters Saudi Aramco has shelved plans for a multi-billion-dollar refining and petrochemical joint venture with Petronas in Malaysia, industry sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) at Pengerang in the state of Johor in southern Malaysia was to have had a 300,000-barrel-per-day refinery and petrochemical complex with a chemical output ...

  Bloomberg Oil gains eased in New York after an industry report that US crude and fuel stockpiles climbed last week. Crude supplies rose 2.93 million barrels, the American Petroleum Institute was said to report. Futures lost about 27 cents per barrel from the close after the release of the data. Iraq has trimmed supply by 180,000 barrels a day ...

  Bloomberg Chinese smartphone brands led by Vivo have muscled out local rivals in India with increasingly stylish yet affordable devices, challenging Samsung Electronics Co. for supremacy in the world’s fastest-growing major phone market. Chinese labels occupied four of the top five spots in 2016’s final quarter, shoving aside Micromax and Intex, according to a Counterpoint Research report released. Samsung ...

  Bloomberg Taiwan’s economy, which began 2016 in contraction, concluded it on the strongest footing in almost two years as stronger trade activity helped offset weakness in consumption. Gross domestic product rose 2.58 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, preliminary data from the statistics bureau showed on Wednesday. That compared with a median estimate of 2.85 percent ...