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BEIRUTH / Reuters The only bidder in Lebanon’s first tender for five offshore energy blocks was a consortium made up of France’s Total, Italy’s ENI and Russia’s Novatek, Minister of Energy and Water Cesar Abi Khalil said. The consortium submitted two bids for block 4 and block 9, Abi Khalil said in a statement on Facebook. Lebanon sits on the ...

Bloomberg Bharti Airtel Ltd. surged the most since in five months after it announced that it had agreed to absorb Tata Group’s mobile-phone business in a “cash-free” transaction shaking up one of the world’s most crowded wireless markets. The stock advanced 7.8 percent to 431.60 rupees, the most since May 10, after India’s largest mobile-phone operator said it will get ...

Bloomberg Jollibee Foods Corp., the fast-food chain that controls more than half of the Philippines’ $4 billion market with its signature fried chicken, is looking for acquisitions to accelerate ambitious expansion plans in the US and China. The targets could be other fast-food chains as well as fast-casual restaurants like Smashburger, the US franchise in which Jollibee owns 40 percent, ...

Bloomberg Qualcomm Inc. filed lawsuits in China seeking to ban the sale and manufacture of iPhones in the country, the chipmaker’s biggest shot at Apple Inc. so far in a sprawling and bitter legal fight. The San Diego-based company aims to inflict pain on Apple in the world’s largest market for smartphones and cut off production in a country where ...

Bloomberg China’s broadest gauge of new credit exceeded projections, signaling that the funding taps remain open even as the government pushes to curb excessive borrowing. Aggregate financing stood at$276 billion in September, the People’s Bank of China said, compared with an estimated 1.57 trillion yuan in a Bloomberg survey and 1.48 trillion yuan the prior month. New yuan loans stood ...

Bloomberg Two of the three China-based bidders for the Chicago Stock Exchange have withdrawn from the group trying to acquire the market, according to a person familiar with the matter. Chongqing Jintian Industrial Co. and Chongqing Longshang Decoration Co. are pulling out of the deal, according to the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private negotiations. That leaves ...

Bloomberg Artificial intelligence could add 630 billion pounds ($837 billion) to the UK economy by 2035, a government-commissioned report said. The economic boost would come from a combination of more personalised services, improvements in health care and adopting machine learning to find ways to use resources more efficiently, according to the report. But to see that gain, the UK needs ...

Bloomberg General Motors Co. and its union in Canada reached an agreement to resolve an almost monthlong strike, a crucial step towards the largest US automaker resuming production of one if its top models. The carmaker and the Unifor union announced the tentative accord in statements that didn’t give details or say when workers will vote on ratification. Employees at ...

Bloomberg Right as UK Prime Minister Theresa May filed for divorce from the European Union, her Brexit department hired elite management consultancy, McKinsey & Co., to the tune of 1.9 million pounds ($2.5 million) to help get the job done. While the contract was only formally announced in an email, an accompanying excel sheet shows that the consultancy giant was ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. is edging closer to a settlement with regulators over the crisis-era mortgage bonds investigation that took a $1 billion chunk out of third-quarter profit, according to Chief Financial Officer John Shrewsberry. “We are now having a negotiation, so it’s a matter of probably months or quarters, not anything more than that,” Shrewsberry said in a ...