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Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc said demand for air travel within Europe could receive an unlikely boost if the Chinese coronavirus epidemic persists, prompting people to holiday closer to home. Trends from 2003, when travellers shunned Asia after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) outbreak, suggest consumers may begin to alter their travel habits, Ryanair Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said. …

Bloomberg Levi Strauss & Co’s profitability rose in its latest quarter, with the jeans maker citing higher prices and fewer sales to off-price retailers. The company also reported continuing weakness in its US wholesale business, however. The shares alternated between losses and gains in late trading. Gross margin, a key gauge of profitability, rose 1.1 percentage point from a year …

Bloomberg Intu Properties Plc has written down the value of one of the UK’s largest malls, offering a glimpse at its parlous finances ahead of a planned equity raise. The company notified holders of 485 million pounds ($631 million) of bonds secured against Intu Metrocentre, a large mall in northeast England, that the debt secured against the property now accounts …

Bloomberg Luckin Coffee Inc, the Chinese challenger to Starbucks Corp, has lost nearly a third of its value since the outbreak of the coronavirus. However, at least one analyst maintains this may be just a blip for the company. The upstart has closed all of its coffee shops in Wuhan, the capital of the Hubei province and the epicenter of …

Bloomberg The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) and its allies considered how to respond to a plunge in oil prices, with Russia signaling for the first time it was open to Saudi Arabia’s push for an emergency meeting. Potential dates being discussed are February 8-9 and February 14-15, though for now the next regular meeting on March 5-6 remains …

Bloomberg A $22 billion injection into Chinese markets won’t be enough to prevent the country’s stocks and currency falling on Monday, but it may ease a global sell-off sparked by the spread of the coronavirus. That’s according to analysts after the People’s Bank of China and other regulators announced a slew of measures to shore up their financial markets when …

Bloomberg The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the nation’s biggest labour federation, will present its proposal to rescue state power company Eskom Holdings SOC to senior members of government and the business community on Monday. The union group, an ally of the ruling African National Congress, wants the government-owned pension fund, the Public Investment Corp, and state lenders, …

Bloomberg The top two US states for wind power installed their most turbines ever last year, helping push up nationwide capacity growth to a seven-year high as tax benefits sent developers rushing projects into service. Texas added almost 4 gigawatts and Iowa installed 1.7 gigawatts, expanding their lead in wind power capacity, according to a report from the American Wind …

Bloomberg Investors who assumed the quarterly deluge of corporate results would determine the direction of stocks in late January have obviously found themselves with much bigger concerns to cope with. Earnings season is fast being forgotten in a market where cascading fear about the human toll of coronavirus has come to dominate sentiment. The S&P 500 just dropped the most …

Bloomberg The pound ended a tumultuous month on a high note on the Brexit day. Sterling was on course for its biggest weekly gain since mid-December, a day after the Bank of England (BOE) kept interest rates unchanged, supporting the currency. Analysts expect it to climb more than 1% to $1.33 by the end of June, according to a Bloomberg …