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BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq plans to build an oil refinery at the port of Fao on the Gulf with two Chinese companies, and is seeking investors to build three more, the oil ministry said on its website on Monday. The refinery in Fao will have a 300,000 barrel-per-day capacity and include a petrochemical plant, it said. Two other refineries, each ...

LONDON / Reuters Tehran is ready to file a case with the International Court of Arbitration (ICA) over the quality and price of gas it receives from Turkmenistan, the Iranian oil minister said on Monday, as a dispute between the two nations over payments escalates. The Central Asian nation stopped gas exports to Iran in January 2017, saying it was ...

Bloomberg In the latest reminder that coal still dominates the world’s biggest energy consumer, Chinese power producers are warning of supply tightness while one northern province plans to pause switching homes and industries to natural gas to avoid further heating shortages. Four of China’s biggest generators sent an “emergency report” dated Jan. 22 to the National Development & Reform Commission, ...

Bloomberg Google faced a Monday deadline to defend changes to its shopping service that left old foes clamoring for a new wave of European Union antitrust fines. Still smarting from 2017’s record 2.4 billion euro ($3 billion) penalty, Google must submit the first report to the EU on how it has met a strict demand from regulators to give smaller ...

Bloomberg Sanofi agreed to buy Belgium’s Ablynx NV for $4.8 billion, outbidding rival Novo Nordisk A/S to gain a potential blockbuster for a rare blood clotting disease. Paris-based Sanofi will pay 45 euros a share in cash for all outstanding shares of Ablynx, it said. The price is 48 percent above Novo’s unsolicited offer of as much as 30.50 euros ...

Bloomberg The euro area is set to start the new year the way it ended the old: the economy is strong but inflation is weak. The region’s fastest growth in a decade will be confirmed this week in a burst of data that should also show economic confidence at the highest since the currency bloc’s early days, unemployment at a ...

Bloomberg There’s nothing like $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to help make friends at a gathering of conservative political donors. Donald Trump is gaining ground with members to the Koch political network, after the president’s name was hardly mentioned when the deep-pocketed individuals last assembled seven months ago. At that time, the group was skeptical of the former New York ...

Bloomberg The rationale for merging some of Europe’s biggest lenders is compelling. That’s the view of many financial executives who met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. A decade after the financial crisis, some of the region’s biggest lenders are facing declining revenue as interest rates linger near record lows, while legal bills and capital demands ...

DUBAI / Reuters Bahrain-based Ithmaar Bank plans to add more than 100 branches in Pakistan this year through its subsidiary Faysal Bank, to capitalise on the country’s low penetration rate of banking services, a senior executive said. Ithmaar Bank owns 66 percent of Faysal Bank, whose contribution to the Islamic retail bank’s overall balance sheet would likely grow to more ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank has to end its quantitative easing as soon as possible, according to ECB Governing Council member Klaas Knot, who said there’s not a single reason anymore to continue with the program. “The program has done what could realistically be expected of it,” Knot, who also heads the Dutch Central Bank, said in an interview on ...