Bloomberg Mark Carney hit back against critics who accused him of supporting the U.K.’s membership in the European Union as a new poll showed the Leave campaign holding its lead ahead of next week’s referendum. The Bank of England has “a duty” to report its “evidence-based judgment” to parliament and the public, the institution’s governor wrote in a letter ...

  Bloomberg The pound dropped toward a two-month low versus the dollar as traders awaited the Bank of England’s final policy meeting before the U.K. votes on its membership to the European Union. Sterling weakened against 12 of its 16 major peers, dropping to a three-year low versus the yen. The June 23 referendum has dominated the currency market with ...

  Bloomberg Economic momentum in Switzerland is expected to pick up next year as the recovery in the neighboring euro area gains steam, the government said, confirming its last quarterly forecast. Gross domestic product will expand 1.4 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2017, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs in Bern said on Thursday, leaving projections unchanged from ...

  Bloomberg Recent deluges in France that flooded metro stations in Paris will delay the harvest in the European Union’s biggest wheat producer, according to the country’s biggest grain cooperative. Harvesting will probably start up to 10 days later than usual, said Jean-Francois Loiseau, chairman of Axereal, which collects about 5.5 million metric tons a year from its members. Wheat-growing ...

  Bloomberg The world’s biggest natural gas exporter isn’t too concerned about a global glut that will probably last another five years. Gazprom PJSC is counting on falling European output to boost flows to a record and cement its 30 percent market share, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev, 60, said in an interview. After crude’s 35 percent slide last ...

  Paris, France / AFP Sales of cars in the European Union surged by 16 percent in May compared to a year earlier, continuing a 33-month rise and nearing pre-recession levels, manufacturers said Thursday. A total of 1.29 million new cars were sold in the 28-nation bloc, a tally close to that of May 2008, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (EAMA) ...

  Vilnius, Lithuania / AFP The European Commission is expected to launch legal action against France over its application of the national minimum wage to foreign truck drivers, a top EU official said. Brussels will send a formal letter launching the procedure “in a few hours”, said Elzbieta Bienkowska, the EU’s internal market chief. “From the single market perspective it raises ...

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent and ninth visit to China to attend the annual government-to-government consultations might have been the most difficult one so far. This time Merkel arrived with a much longer list of pressing issues to discuss than before, including issues such as market economy status, overcapacity in steel exports, the South China Sea dispute, and the ...

  Noah Smith In the past year, a huge amount of money has been flowing out of China. In the past, when this happened, it was because the Chinese central bank was buying foreign assets. But this time the People’s Bank of China has been selling foreign assets — it’s China’s citizens and companies that are sending their money overseas. ...

  Markus Winter SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS Kasumigaseki vs Nagatacho – Japan’s powerful bureaucracy versus its political center. For the past three years, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decidedly tilted the balance in the latter direction. After over half a century of almost unbroken LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) rule, the Democratic Party (DPJ) won a landslide victory in 2009 to ...