Bloomberg European banks will probably dodge an attempt to force the separation of their investment banking and retail arms after the European Commission’s efforts to broker an agreement between lawmakers appear to have flopped. The European Parliament’s negotiating team failed to make progress on the so-called bank structural reform bill in a meeting with commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis ...

  Bloomberg Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Britain’s largest mortgage lender, posted a 15 percent decline in third-quarter profit as it took a 1 billion-pound ($1.2 billion) charge to compensate customers who were wrongly sold loan insurance. The bank’s shares fell as much as 3.8 percent as impairments climbed more than most estimates while an accounting change drove an improvement in ...

  Cairo / AFP Facing a weeks-long shortage in a country already restless with rising prices, Egyptian authorities this week raided a Twinkies snack cake factory and confiscated its sugar stocks — all 2,000 tonnes. The raid on Sunday on Edita Food Industries, one of Egypt’s largest producers, came as discontent with increased food prices and empty shelves bubbles to ...

  Reuters Ride-hailing service Uber plans to make Cairo a regional hub with an investment of more than $50 million in the next two years, building on its breakneck growth in the infamously traffic-clogged city, its Egypt general manager said. The company has committed to investing $250 million over the next five years in the Middle East, where Cairo, a ...

  Reuters Kuwait’s Equate Petrochemical has set initial price thoughts for a two-part US dollar-denominated bond that is expected to be sold on Thursday, according to a document from the lead arrangers. The company’s initial guidance for a long-five-year bond was at the low end of 200s basis points over midswaps, while price thoughts for a ten-year debt tranche were ...

  Reuters Kuwait’s National Real Estate Company (NREC) plans to issue a $500 million sukuk early next year to help fund new projects and to refinance existing debt, its chief financial officer said on Monday. The company is about to obtain a credit rating from Standard & Poor’s and will then seek to appoint banks to arrange the planned Islamic ...

  Bloomberg The trading arms of Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc enjoyed their best year ever in 2015, helping push the combined gross margins of oil merchants to a six-year high, according to a closely watched report. Oil traders last year “stormed ahead, thanks to low, volatile spot prices that created cash-and-carry opportunities,” consultancy Oliver Wyman said in ...

  Bloomberg Ousted Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry accused directors at India’s largest conglomerate of wrongfully dismissing him and warned that the tea-to-software giant may face 1.18 trillion rupees ($18 billion) in writedowns because of five unprofitable businesses he inherited. Mistry, who had been Tata’s chairman for almost four years, was abruptly removed from his role on Monday for non ...

  Bloomberg Posco, South Korea’s largest steelmaker, posted the largest quarterly profit since 2013 as a property and infrastructure boom in China boosts global prices, lifting earnings at Asian mills. Net income, excluding minority interests, was 539.3 billion won ($476 million) in the three months through September, after a 550 billion won loss a year earlier, the Pohang-based company said ...

  Bloomberg Australia’s headline inflation accelerated last quarter, sending the currency up half a US cent and prompting money markets to pare bets on an interest-rate cut. Quarterly headline CPI increased 0.7%, exceeding the 0.5% median estimate in a survey of economists Trimmed mean CPI rose 0.4%, matching forecasts Annual headline CPI advanced 1.3%, beating a predicted 1.1% gain Annual ...