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Paris / AFP A bid by French household goods group Conforama, majority-owned by South Africa’s Steinhoff, for rival Darty has won the backing of Darty’s board, both companies said, derailing a planned Darty tie-up with retail giant Fnac. Conforama earlier this month launched a conditional all-cash offer for Darty at 125 pence ($1.75, 1.61 euros) per share, aiming to create ...

Bloomberg British supermarket group Sainsbury’s said it had made a formal offer worth £1.4 billion for Home Retail Group, owner of catalogue chain Argos. The cash-and-stock takeover is worth the equivalent of $2.0 billion or 1.8 billion euros. Argos sells household items, including televisions, furniture and gardening tools. With South African household goods group Steinhoff having walked away from the ...

HONG KONG / AFP Fashion designer Victoria Beckham launched her first shop outside Britain in Hong Kong as she seeks to tap the Asia market despite a downturn in luxury spending. Beckham’s store in Hong Kong’s Landmark building lies at the heart of the upmarket Central district, a cluster of high-end brands and five-star hotels. The British designer did a final ...

Copenhagen / AFP Bang & Olufsen, the Danish maker of upmarket sound systems and televisions, said on it had entered a partnership with LG Electronics to outsource its production of televisions. The struggling Danish firm, which said in November it was in talks with a potential buyer, said the deal “will address Bang & Olufsen’s key challenges related to scale ...

Bloomberg Hackers who stole $101 million from Bangladesh’s central bank stalked its computer systems for almost two weeks beforehand, according to an interim investigation report seen by Bloomberg. Prepared for Bangladesh Bank by cyber security firms FireEye Inc. and World Informatix, the assessment offers a tantalising glimpse into how cyber criminals can use banks’ own systems against them. The cyber ...

LONDON / Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) should force banks to set aside more capital to support lending in a downturn, former policy maker Charles Goodhart said. The countercyclical capital buffer is currently set at zero and while the Financial Policy Committee (FPC) has said it intends gradually to increase the level to 1 percent, Goodhart said such a ...

New York / AFP US banking supvervisors should beef up their oversight of large banks beyond stress tests with deep-dive audits and greater use of outside examiners, a top regulator said. Under a ‘full-scope’ exam, a team of regulators would converge on the largest US banks to pull ledgers, check whether loan payments are on time and “systematically review a ...

BLOOMBERG Executives at Banco Popolare SC and Banca Popolare di Milano Scarl are racing to reach a merger accord that meets the European Central Bank’s (ECB) capital demands as Italy’s biggest banking deal in years threatens to unravel. After a month of talks with the lenders failed to assuage the ECB’s concerns over capital and governance, the central bank sent ...

LONDON / Bloomberg The UK Green Investment Bank Plc moved closer to selecting special shareholders who can veto changes to its environmental mission after the institution is privatised. The national science academy known as the Royal Society, Scotland’s Institute of Chartered Accountants and Scotland’s Law Society will help create a committee to protect the mandate of the bank, according to ...

AFP Sitting on sofas with laptops balanced awkwardly on their knees as they sip from bottomless cups of tea and coffee, customers have turned an off-the-beaten-path café in Montreal into their personal workspace. And the owners couldn’t be happier. “Here, you are at home,” said Anti Café manager David Chevrier, talking up the new breed of coffee shop that charges ...