Tuesday , 16 December 2025

IAG’s Spanish airlines tap $1.1bn state-backed loan

Bloomberg British Airways owner IAG tapped $1.1 billion in state-backed loans for its Spanish units Iberia and Vueling to help weather collapsing travel demand. The banks involved in the syndicated agreement will ask state-owned Instituto de Crédito Oficial to provide guarantees, and the financing is conditional on those being received, London-based IAG said. The move comes as a surprise after …

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Oil posts first weekly gain on signs of supply easing

Bloomberg Crude posted its first weekly gain in a month as global production cuts start to lift physical markets. Futures in New York rose 17% this week. Oil companies have announced major production closures with Chevron Corp. saying it will shut as much as 400,000 barrels of daily output and Exxon Mobil Corp. reporting it will cut rigs in the …

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China’s services trade drops by 10.8% in Q1

Bloomberg China’s first-quarter total services trade fell 10.8% from a year earlier to $162.82 billion, according to the Ministry of Commerce. Services exports in the January-to-March period declined 4.1% to 444.28 billion yuan while imports dropped 14.5% to 708.02 billion yuan, the ministry said on May 2. The narrowing of the trade deficit that started last year continues, it said. …

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India’s Reliance Industries profit falls 39%

Bloomberg Stay-at-home orders across the world drove India’s most profitable oil refiner’s net income down 39%. Reliance Industries’s earnings slumped in the three months through March as lockdowns slammed oil prices and destroyed demand for fuels, hitting its mainstay refining business. The oil-to-chemicals business posted the biggest profit drop in nearly two decades, and prompted its chairman and Asia’s richest …

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Montana ruling could delay Keystone XL by a year, says TC Energy

Bloomberg TC Energy Corp said a federal judge’s decision to block a key permit for the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline last month could delay the project for as much as a year. The Canadian pipeline giant thinks it can overcome the issues presented by the ruling and has been trying to mitigate any potential delays by working on other …

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Coal India April shipments fall 25.5%

Bloomberg Coal India Ltd’s shipments in April slumped 25.5% from a year earlier after more than a month-long nationwide lockdown halted economic activity, eroding demand for India’s most dominant energy source. Shipments dropped to 39.1 million tons in the month, the Kolkata-based miner said in a filing. Output declined 10.9% to 40.4 million tons. Global coal demand is heading for …

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Tiny game studio finds Nintendo stardom through Sony’s obsolete device

Bloomberg For Toru Kawakatsu, winning a 70-second spot on Nintendo Co.’s popular Direct showcase last month was the culmination of an unusual strategy many dismissed as quixotic. His four-person game studio, dubbed Petit Depotto, started work on an adventure game called Gnosia for the PlayStation Vita portable console back in 2015. The Vita was already ailing back then, and Sony …

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Twitter’s advertising business hit hard by impact of Covid-19

Bloomberg Twitter Inc. has more users than ever, but its advertising business was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic at the end of the first quarter. The social-media company reported revenue of $808 million in the period, ahead of Wall Street estimates of $773 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The shares surged about 10% in early trading. From …

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Facebook signals online ad pain set to worsen

Bloomberg Facebook Inc.’s revenue held up better than expected in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the company warned that the worst of the slowdown in ad spending isn’t over, raising the prospect of a bigger hit across the digital-advertising market. Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner noted the “potential for an even more severe advertising industry contraction.” His …

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Alphabet makes record stock buybacks

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc. is defying political taboos with record stock buybacks as mass unemployment and economic uncertainty boosts scrutiny for the long-controversial practice. S&P 500 companies are set to reduce buybacks by an estimated 50% this year, according to Goldman Sachs. Yet, the Google parent company bought $8.5 billion of its own shares in the first quarter alone. That’s the …

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