Shoreham-by-Sea / AFP A dozen biplanes from the 1920s and 1930s will fly 8,000 miles from Crete to Cape Town next month in a vintage aviation rally that harks back to the early days of air travel. The pilots will fly along the Nile from Cairo to Khartoum, past the highlands of Ethiopia, down through East Africa past Mount ...

  Paris / AFP Airbus on Tuesday angrily lashed out against the Polish government’s handling of a failed helicopter deal which has caused diplomatic tensions between Paris and Warsaw. “Never have we been treated by any government customer the way this government has treated us,” Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said in a statement. The sharp criticism comes days after ...

  Geneva / AFP Circling the globe in an aircraft that used no fuel would be enough for some to rest on their laurels, but the pilots of Solar Impulse 2 spoke of their new project. “An unmanned version of Solar Impulse,” aviator and engineer Andre Borschberg told reporters when asked what groundbreaking mission the Swiss-based team was tackling next. ...

  Bloomberg It is setting up to be a very merry Christmas for Toys “R” Us. Two quarters of strong sales will likely be followed by the brightest holiday season in years for the struggling toy retailer, which has spent more than a decade under private equity ownership. During that time it has mostly been cutting costs, closing stores — ...

  Singapore / AFP Singapore’s central bank on Tuesday shut down a second Swiss bank under investigation for alleged money-laundering activities linked to Malaysian state fund 1MDB as it vowed strong action against potential violators. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said it had ordered Falcon Bank to cease operations in the city-state because of “serious failures in anti-money-laundering (AML) ...

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. combined corporate payments and some consumer-banking operations with the technology-innovations group, creating a unit run by the former leader of consumer lending, Avid Modjtabai. As head of the Payments, Virtual Solutions and Innovation unit, Modjtabai will report to Chief Operating Officer Tim Sloan, according to a statement Monday from the San Francisco-based bank that ...

  Emirates Business For the nine months ended September 30, the net profit of Qatar National Bank reached $2.7 billion, up by 11% compared to last year. Total assets reached $196 billion, up by 37% from September 2015, the highest ever achieved by the Group. QNB Group completed the acquisition of 99.88% stake in Finansbank A.S. – Turkey, during the ...

  Moscow / AFP Russia’s VTB Bank on Tuesday said it was considering relocating the London office of its investment banking division over Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. “Relocating from London or maintaining our presence there will depend on how Brexit unfolds,” the group said in a statement. “Due to Brexit, VTB will be adjusting its activities in ...

  Bloomberg Many Latvians got a shock this summer when they were informed their bank accounts risked being blocked if they didn’t hand over details of their citizenship, financial plans and any ties to high-level politics. Demands to fill out online questionnaires were dispatched by lenders at the behest of financial regulators, who’ve been battling the Baltic nation’s reputation as ...

  DUBAI / Emirates Business Private sector companies in Dubai experienced another strong improvement in business conditions during September. This was highlighted by the seasonally adjusted Emirates NBD Dubai Economy Tracker Index posting 55.1, down fractionally from 55.7 in August but still well above the 50.0 no-change threshold. On average in the third quarter of 2016, the headline index signalled ...