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LONDON / Bloomberg Britain’s banks have criticised the UK Treasury’s plan to pare back the scope of the bank levy to lenders’ domestic businesses only, warning international operations could still be subject to taxation after the changes. Under the government’s current proposal, funds raised at a UK holding company level and then passed down to an international subsidiary would continue ...

BAKU / Bloomberg The once-in-a-generation crash in oil prices sent the Azeri economy staggering into a crisis and the central bank is running out of options to stop the unraveling. Every seventh lender is now shut, the currency is testing new lows and by one measure Azerbaijan’s international reserves are as thin as Ukraine’s. The central bank has little to ...

Beijing / AFP China’s bank loans plunged in February from January, the central bank said, despite government efforts to encourage lending to keep the world’s second-largest economy from slowing. New loans extended by banks slid to 726.6 billion yuan ($112 billion), the People’s Bank of China said, a massive drop from January’s record 2.51 trillion yuan lending surge. The figure ...

BLOOMBERG Gazprom PJSC, the natural-gas export monopoly, has hired banks to organise a sale of Swiss-franc debt in what could be the first Eurobond deal out of Russia this year. Europe’s biggest gas supplier picked Deutsche Bank AG, Gazprombank JSC and UBS Group AG as joint lead managers and Renaissance Capital as a co-manager for investor update meetings in Geneva ...

FRANKFURT / Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, which runs Europe’s biggest investment bank, said it expects the industry’s revenue to decline this year as clients consider pulling back from trading some fixed-income securities and refrain from doing deals. Securities firms will see debt trading revenue fall “slightly” from a year earlier as “an increase in macro revenues due to monetary policy ...

Bloomberg Silver hasn’t been so cheap relative to gold for more than seven years and with mine supplies forecast to contract this year that may be a sign it’s ready to come out of the yellow metal’s shadow. Mine production of silver will probably drop in 2016 for the first time in over a decade and demand is set to ...

Bloomberg Rice farmer Prapatpon Rungsatien perches on a plastic chair in a classroom in rural Thailand. Ceiling fans stir the humid air as she and 49 of her neighbours hunker down for a talk on Southeast Asian economics. Prapatpon, 48, returned to school last month for a state-funded training programme designed to wean farmers off water-intensive rice and teach them ...

Bloomberg The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco will be hosting the first ever retrospective of the famous American fashion designer Oscar de la Renta’s work. The exhibition, organised by André Leon Talley, a former editor-at-large for Vogue and lifelong friend of the designer, runs until May 30. The Retrospective features over 130 pieces designed by de la Renta over ...

Relaxnews The White House state dinner on Thursday shone the spotlight, not only on Canada’s royal family and head of state, but on a pair of Canadian-born designers who dressed First Lady Michelle Obama and Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau. The First Lady chose a floral jacquard gown from longtime favorite designer Jason Wu, while Trudeau chose a slim fitting purple gown with ...

Relaxnews Caitlyn Jenner is the new face of H&M’s sports line. Jenner announced the news on Twitter late Thursday, teasing, “So proud to be part of their inspiring #HMSport campaign. #MoreIsComing #StayTuned,” along with a photo in which she poses in a gym, wearing black and white sneakers and sports wear. H&M later confirmed the announcement, also on Twitter. It’s ...