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When Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on a spinning wheel, the rest of the kingdom went to sleep along with her. Not so in China. As an epidemic rages, many provinces have extended their Lunar New Year holiday by weeks, but financial markets – from commodities and stock exchanges to bond clearing houses – will resume operating on Monday. The ...

There are two key takeaways from the earnings that Apple Inc. reported: IPhones still matter, and wearables are big. On the surface, it would appear that investors can bet on the continuing success of Apple Watch and the surging popularity of AirPods Pro to take up the slack left by declining iPhone revenue. From there, money from services including music, ...

Bloomberg As the flat white trounces black tea, Lipton owner Unilever is weighing a sale of one of its best-known brands. The Anglo-Dutch giant initiated a review of its global tea business, which includes the more than century-old label and generates sales of almost $3.3 billion. The move comes after the company’s slowest quarterly growth in a decade. Unilever is ...

Bloomberg Indian officials met with as many as nine companies during roadshows to gauge interest in a stake sale in the nation’s loss-making flag carrier, people with knowledge of the matter said. Officials from the South Asian nation met executives of companies including British Airways parent IAG SA, IndiGo, India’s biggest airline that’s operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, SpiceJet Ltd ...

Bloomberg The fast-spreading coronavirus could spell the end for the weakest airlines as travel demand dries up in and out of China. The outbreak, which originated in the Chinese city Wuhan, has claimed 200 lives. Total infections have soared past 11,700 in China, surpassing the country’s official number from the 2003 Sars epidemic. Sars cost the global economy an estimated ...

Bloomberg Hennes & Mauritz AB appointed Helena Helmersson as the first female chief executive officer of the fast-fashion pioneer, taking over from founding family scion Karl-Johan Persson, who struggled to contain competition from cheaper rivals and online platforms that revolutionised shopping. Helmersson was previously head of operations, and Persson moves to the supervisory board after more than a decade, where ...

Bloomberg Swatch Group fell to the lowest in a decade as Switzerland’s largest watchmaker faces a triple whammy from Hong Kong protests, competition with smartwatches and viral outbreak in China. Operating profit fell for the first time in three years, dropping 11% to $1.1 billion. Analysts expected 1.09 billion francs. The shares fell as much as 4.1% on January 30. ...

Bloomberg Boeing Co. closed the financial books on a tragic and tumultuous 2019 by revealing that total costs for its grounded 737 Max will surpass $18 billion when the tab for restarting production later this year is included. The planemaker is taking a $2.6 billion pretax writedown to compensate airlines for ballooning losses from a global flying ban that’s expected ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE trade in aluminum amounted to around AED 8 billion during the first three months of 2019, according to statistics revealed by the Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Authority. The Emirates’ trade in the metal hit a record of AED 6.5 bn during the reference period, a growth of 23 percent over the corresponding period in ...

AJMAN / WAM The non-oil GDP in Ajman achieved a 3.6 percent growth in 2018, according to the emirate’s annual economic report 2019 issued by the Department of Economic Development covering the emirate’s economic outcomes until the end of 2018. The report showed that the average annual growth for the 2014-2018 period was some 3.8 percent, a clear indication of ...