March, 2018

• 26 March

  Russia holds firm as top crude supplier to China

  

  BEIJING / Reuters Russia kept its spot as the largest crude oil supplier to China in February, data showed, a role it held in January and for the past two years on an annual basis. Russia supplied 5.052 million tonnes, or 1.32 million barrels per day (bpd) last month, up 17.8 percent from a year earlier, data from the Chinese ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  A $14 billion legal test is latest threat to Norway’s oil future

  

  Bloomberg Norway’s oil industry has one more thing to worry about. After an unprecedented lawsuit against Arctic drilling, environmentalists have launched a new legal battle to challenge a tax incentive that’s been a cornerstone of the country’s policy to stimulate oil exploration. The move comes at a bad time for Norway, which needs to step up the search for new ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Vitol posts 25 percent drop in profit as market shifts

  

  Bloomberg Vitol Group, the world’s biggest independent oil trader, suffered a 25 percent drop in annual profit as income from assets sales failed to offset weaker trading results. Net income fell to $1.5 billion in 2017, from $2 billion the year before, according to a person familiar with Vitol’s results. The energy-trading environment has deteriorated as output curbs by OPEC ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Stocks roar back, bonds fall as trade angst ebbs; dollar drops

  

  Bloomberg US equities rallied back from the biggest weekly rout in more than two years, with major benchmarks surging the most since early February on signs that an escalation of trade tensions was beginning to ease. Technology firms and banks were among the biggest gainers on the S&P 500 Index as a measure of the gauge’s valuation rose from a ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Gulf stocks muted, Saudi bourse closes up despite missile attacks

  

  Reuters Middle Eastern stocks were mixed on Monday with investors in Saudi Arabia largely ignoring an apparent escalation in the country’s three-year war with Yemen, after the conflict caused its first civilian death within Riyadh. The kingdom’s air defences shot down seven ballistic missiles fired by Yemen’s Houthi forces late on March 25, and debris killed an Egyptian resident of ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  TPG nears deal for $1.2 billion Indian hospital chain Fortis

  

  Bloomberg A consortium led by TPG is nearing an agreement to gain control of Fortis Healthcare Ltd., India’s second-largest private hospital chain by market value, people with knowledge of the matter said. The investor group, which also includes Manipal Health Enterprises Pvt, could announce a deal as soon as the next few days, according to the people, who asked not ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Google’s Pichai sings China’s praises in AI, pledges bigger team

  

  Bloomberg Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Google, expects China to play a crucial role in artificial intelligence as he keeps expanding the search giant’s workforce in the country, even as many of its services are blocked. “China is already playing a big part in how AI will shape our futures,” Pichai said at the annual China Development Forum in ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  India’s Ultratech pushes for M&A deal

  

  Bloomberg India’s largest cement maker, UltraTech Cement Ltd., aims to aggressively cut its debt over the next two years to help prepare for more acquisitions. UltraTech, controlled by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, plans to prepay some loans through its internal cash accruals, according to Chief Financial Officer Atul Daga. It targets to cut the ratio of its net debt to ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  China seeks to deploy 30mn autonomous cars

  

  Bloomberg China’s aspiration to deploy 30 million autonomous vehicles within a decade is seeding a fledgling chip industry, with startups like Horizon Robotics Inc. emerging to build the brains behind those wheels. The Beijing-based company is taking aim at Nvidia Corp. and Mobileye NV just as the autonomous-driving business takes off and uncertainty looms over international trade. Annual revenue from ...

  Read More »
• 26 March

  Echo of run-up to ‘87 market meltdown seen in US-China tension

  Bloomberg History redux? The surging tension over trade between the US and China has prompted comparisons to American combativeness towards Japan that preceded the 1987 equity meltdown—at least, in the mind of veteran market analyst Hao Hong. While Hong, head of research with Bocom International Holdings Co., acknowledges that it’s possible to crawl up many a technical chart of a ...

  Read More »