Sydney / AFP Australian carrier Qantas flagged on Monday a hit to first half earnings with falling international airfares offsetting a decline in fuel prices. The airline, which has turned itself around in recent years on the back of aggressive cost-cutting, said it expects underlying profit before tax to be between Aus$800-850 million (US$607-645 million) for the six months ...

  Bloomberg China has a dream of challenging the duopoly of Airbus Group SE and Boeing Co. in the global market for air planes. That ambition is slowly taking shape in a hangar in Shanghai. The state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd., locally known as COMAC, is building the 168-seat, single-aisle aircraft C919, betting the model would help the ...

  Bloomberg Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.’s sale of businesses in five Asian markets to DBS Group Holdings Ltd. offers the latest sign of consolidation in the region’s highly competitive wealth industry, which has already seen a retreat by European players like Barclays Plc and Societe Generale SA. DBS will pay S$110 million ($79 million) for retail and ...

  Dubai/ Emirates Business Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, revealed that the most traded equity CFDs (Contracts for Difference) in the MENA region are focused on the US stock market and US tech companies. Two of the top three most traded CFD equity indexes by Saxo clients in the MENA region since January 1, 2015 are ...

  Bloomberg Two of China’s biggest banks, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp., are testing their regulator’s tolerance by protecting profits at the expense of bad-loan buffers. ICBC and Construction Bank both reported loan-loss coverage ratios below a regulatory minimum of 150 percent of existing nonperforming loans when they disclosed third-quarter earnings. So far, ...

  Bloomberg The UK’s biggest banks and financial firms could gain an additional 12 billion pounds ($14.6 billion) a year in revenue from Britain leaving the European Union, according to a report from a pro-Brexit lobby group. Leaving the 28-nation trading bloc and ending membership in the EU single market for trade and services would help Britain cut “stifling Brussels ...

  Bloomberg If the world’s biggest economy is really on the upswing, then why are America’s banks stockpiling a record amount of ultrasafe bonds? After all, jobs are back, the Federal Reserve is close to raising interest rates again and growth has perked up after a sluggish first half. But instead of ramping up lending to keep up with deposits, ...

  With most election forecasts pointing towards a victory for Hillary Clinton, her top advisers are beginning to think about how to stabilize a world that has been rocked by the U.S presidential campaign and by recent reversals for American power. The paradox for the Clinton team, if it wins, will be how to signal continuity with an Obama administration ...

  The central banks of Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. will hold policy meetings this week. These three systemically important institutions are inclined to implement new policy measures, albeit different ones. Yet all three may end up keeping their policy stance as is. Their individual and collective dilemmas illustrate the current policy funk facing the global economy, as well ...

  FBI Director James Comey is an institution man. So it must be especially painful to him that he is single-handedly undermining faith not only in the institution he leads, but in the propriety of a presidential election. Comey has been balancing the interests of those institutions, the FBI and the election, for months. In July, when he held a ...