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Bloomberg Oil fell to the lowest in more than a week amid a surprise jump in US crude inventories and an escalating trade dispute between the US and China. Futures in New York fell as much as 1.4 percent. The American Petroleum Institute was said to report US stockpiles rose 5.59 million barrels last week. Meanwhile, the US will propose …

DUBAI / Emirates Business Emirates and Trenitalia, Italy’s national railway company, on Wednesday announced a new codeshare agreement which will enable Emirates customers from across its worldwide network to discover new destinations across Italy. With just one easy-to-book ticket, travellers will be able to fly on Emirates and reach some of Italy’s most picturesque cities and towns using high speed, …

Bloomberg Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Co. (Kufpec) is borrowing $1.1 billion to spend on oil and natural gas projects as the company plans to expand its shale operations, Chief Executive Officer Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah said. Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and Societe Generale SA were the joint lead arrangers of the five-year loan for Kufpec, a unit of state-run Kuwait …

Bloomberg Saudi Arabia’s King Salman held his first-ever cabinet meeting in Neom, a planned $500 billion futuristic city that will host more robots than people in a desolate peninsula in the kingdom’s northwest. The sci-fi city on the Red Sea coast is designed to represent Saudi Arabia’s efforts to transform itself away from oil. The 82-year-old monarch’s visit there for …

Bloomberg A California-based clean-energy financing company closed a $103 million bond offering backed by commercial loans supporting renewables, energy-efficiency and water and seismic-upgrade projects. CleanFund Commercial PACE Capital Inc.’s bond deal is one of the first to bundle C-PACE obligations — commercial property assessed clean-energy — according to a statement. PACE uses property tax liens to repay the debts. The …

Bloomberg China’s central bank has started actively encouraging banks to extend more credit by taking a softer stance on loan quotas, people familiar with the matter said, as authorities ratchet up efforts to bolster a cooling economy. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has delivered the message via so-called window guidance, said the people, who asked not to be named …

Bloomberg India’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in two years as it stepped up efforts to curb inflation and stem capital outflows. Five of the six members of the monetary policy committee voted to raise the repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 6.5 percent, with Ravindra Dholakia the only one opposing it, the Reserve …

Bloomberg UBS Group AG doesn’t have to hand over client details to French tax authorities after a Swiss court handed the country’s largest bank a clear victory in a long-running saga over banking secrecy. The Swiss Federal Administrative Court said that French officials didn’t provide evidence that “the taxpayers involved have failed to comply with their tax obligations.” “Simply having …

Bloomberg BNP Paribas SA’s resilience in equities helped offset declines at a key debt-trading business that under-performed Wall Street rivals. The Paris-based bank benefited from “good volumes” in derivatives and providing brokerage services to hedge funds, driving equities revenue to a three-year high. That contrasted with the FICC unit buying and selling bonds, currencies and commodities — its biggest trading …

Bloomberg The ruble could plunge by as much as 15 percent and borrowing costs would spike to a three-year high if the US goes ahead with proposals to impose sanctions on Russian government bonds, according to a new model developed by Citigroup Inc. Moscow-based analysts at the bank said that such extreme moves would come from a “worst-case scenario” of …