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  Bloomberg Venezuela freed the former head of the government’s intelligence agency five years after he was arrested for allegedly instigating a rebellion against President Nicolas Maduro, according to people familiar with the matter. Miguel Rodriguez Torres, a former major general in the army who fell out of Maduro’s favor, was set free Saturday morning and left the country for ...

Bloomberg A retired general pledging unequivocal support for Ukraine is favored to defeat a billionaire former premier in the final round of the Czech presidential election next weekend, opinion polls showed. In the first round of voting last week, Petr Pavel, who once served as Nato’s highest-ranking military official, finished first by a razor-thin margin, ahead of former Prime Minister ...

  Bloomberg Intesa Sanpaolo SpA is cutting risk-weighted assets by as much as €20 billion ($21.6 billion) after the European Central Bank (ECB) faulted the lender’s calculations of how much risk it faces. The Italian bank, which comfortably exceeds its capital requirements, is carrying out the reduction via the sale of loans and other assets. It’s also looking at so-called ...

  Bloomberg ICICI Bank Ltd. reported 34% growth in profit, helped by surprise improvement in interest margin as lenders in the country continue to report stellar performance, backed by rising demand for loans. Net income was 83.1 billion rupees ($1 billion) in the quarter ended December compared with 61.9 billion a year ago, the company said in a statement. That ...

  Bloomberg Morgan Stanley elevated 184 employees to managing director, a smaller number of promotions to the firm’s top rank from last year. A record 38% are women, pushing the share of female MDs at the New York-based firm up to 24%, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Of the US-based employees who were promoted, 5% are ...

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank (ECB) should stick to a plan laid out by President Christine Lagarde and continue raising interest rates in half-point steps, according to Governing Council member Robert Holzmann. “We reduced the most recent rate move to 50 basis points from 75 under the assumption that we will hold this pace for a while,” Holzmann told ...

  Bloomberg Angola’s central bank carried out the world’s biggest interest rate cut so far this year as it forecasts inflation to slow further. The policy committee dropped the rate to 18% from 19.5%, Governor Jose de Lima Massano told reporters in Luanda, the capital. That’s the steepest cut since July 2018. “This decision was based on the reduction of ...

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG is considering slightly higher bonuses for its traders while drastically shrinking those paid to staff who help issue bonds and stocks, reflecting the strong divergence in performance between the two businesses. The German lender is debating an average increase in variable compensation of about 10% for executives buying and selling fixed-income securities and currencies after ...

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit will spend $35 billion on new data centers in Virginia by 2040, underscoring its determination to stay ahead of rivals Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. The investments at multiple locations will create an estimated 1,000 jobs in Virginia, the state said in a news release. Virginia is Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) most important hub, ...

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. is still planning to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, but an even more important follow-up product — lightweight augmented-reality glasses — has been postponed due to technical challenges. The company had originally hoped to release the AR glasses after the debut of its mixed-reality headset, which combines both AR and virtual reality, but that ...