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Atlanta / Bloomberg Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. said it will spin off its lodging properties and timeshare business into separate publicly traded companies in a bid to boost shareholder value as the world’s largest hotel operator faces increased competition. About 70 of the company’s 146 owned and leased properties — mainly the U.S. hotels — will be spun off into ...

Canberra / Bloomberg The cost of insuring the debt of Australia’s largest banks surged by the most in four years after a report by research firm Variant Perception fueled speculation about risks in the nation’s housing market. The average cost of credit default swaps for the four biggest Australian lenders surged by 18.6 basis points, the largest one-day increase since ...

Bloomberg Petroleo Brasileiro SA secured a $10 billion loan from the China Development Bank as the beleaguered state-owned oil producer endures the worst crude market in a generation and faces more than double that amount in maturities over the next two years. The lifeline is part of a deal to supply crude to the Asian country, Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras ...

London / AFP Britain’s state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) posted its eighth annual loss in a row although the latest result came in 43 percent smaller at around £2.0 billion. The loss after tax stood at £1.979 billion ($2.771 billion, 2.518 billion euros) last year compared with a net loss of £3.47 billion in 2014, helped by the sale ...

Washington / Bloomberg Citigroup Inc. said it received a subpoena from the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York regarding the bank’s possible role in bribes paid to international soccer officials. The government is seeking information on banking relationships and transactions tied to FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, New York-based Citigroup said Friday in its annual regulatory filing ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc said the US Justice Department shut an antitrust probe into bank’s precious metals trading as prosecutors focus on a criminal fraud investigation. The bank was informed in January that the antitrust division was closing its investigation, while the probe run by the fraud section is ongoing, the company disclosed in a filing. HSBC didn’t immediately comment ...

TOKYO / Bloomberg Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) Inc., Japan’s largest bank, sold the equivalent of $9.4 billion in bonds this week to help boost buffers to meet regulatory requirements, making it the biggest issuer of corporate notes globally this week. MUFG offered 300 billion yen ($2.66 billion) in higher-tier capital-counting notes to institutional investors on Friday, in addition to ...

Relaxnews While Virtual Reality (VR) headsets were the stars of the show at the 2016 Mobile World Congress, new smartwatches wore noticeably more thin on the ground. Here’s a roundup of the hottest devices from both fields that were on show at the trade fair in Barcelona, Spain HTC Vive First revealed at last year’s MWC, the HTC Vive has ...

AFP Facebook rolled out a platform for quick, immersive ads with the potential to become a tempting rival to television commercials. The leading social network made Canvas available globally as a free tool marketers can use to turn smartphone or tablet ads into “experiences” mixing videos, photos, text and “call-to-action” buttons. Mobile ads built with Canvas entice people to scroll ...

Relaxnews The two new Galaxy S7 handsets from Samsung were the most-tweeted about Mobile World Congress topics during the annual tech conference’s 2016 edition. The Mobile World Congress has increasingly become a destination for technology manufacturers of all kinds, but at the eighth MWC in Barcelona, February 22-25, it was the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge that won out ...