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  BEIRUT / Reuters Lebanon’s Blom Bank reported a 3.5 percent year-on-year rise in first-quarter net profit, it said in a statement on Saturday. Net profit for the three months to the end of March was $112.03 million, it said. The bank had reported a $108.23 million net profit for the same period a year ago. It is Lebanon’s second-largest ...

  Bloomberg Boeing Co.’s allegations that Bombardier Inc. sold C Series passenger jets at unfairly low prices are ‘absurd,’ the Canadian planemaker said, raising the volume in an increasingly noisy relationship between the US and Canada. Boeing’s contention that Delta Air Lines Inc. purchased jets for $19.6 million apiece, ‘is plain wrong,’ Bombardier spokesman Bryan Tucker said in an interview. ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Malaysia Airlines is close to launching a new airline that will use its six Airbus A380s to fly passengers undertaking the Muslim pilgrimages of Haj and Umrah, Chief Executive Peter Bellew said. Bellew said that all the key personnel, apart from a chief executive, have been appointed and are likely to be announced in the next ...

  Dubai / Emirates Business Qatar Airways invites passengers to start planning their next trip with amazing discounts on flights across all cabin classes. With the airline’s ‘Global Sales Campaign’, which lasts until May 3, families, friends and couples can book flights to any destination across the airline’s award- winning network of more than 150 destinations across the globe, with ...

  Bloomberg French retail giants Carrefour SA and Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA have spent years battling for dominance on their home turf. Their new big battleground is almost 10,000 kilometers away. Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, has become a key factor in propping up Carrefour’s earnings in recent years amid disappointing growth in France. The grocer’s quarterly same-store revenue in Brazil ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Oman’s new budget airline SalamAir will operate as many as 12 Airbus A320 narrow body jets by 2020, as it aims for profitability by the end 2018, its chief executive said. Launched in January, SalamAir has started flights from Muscat to Dubai, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Salalah in Oman. It plans to increase its fleet ...

  Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP’s quest to be the first company to build back-up power plants in southern Germany faltered after the European Commission queried whether the nation needs the facilities at all. The world’s biggest private equity firm’s PQ Energy unit says an EU antitrust probe could delay a bid to build new reserve power plants in Germany’s industrial ...

  Bloomberg Oil’s recovery is helping ease the pain of shrinking output by China’s biggest energy producers. PetroChina Co., the country’s largest producer, reported first quarter earnings swung to a profit thanks to the surge in prices, even as total output fell 6.3% from a year ago. China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., the refining giant known as Sinopec, saw net ...

  Bloomberg Wind may have just gotten a boost in the biggest US electricity market. New rules requiring power producers to ensure supplies are available all year round are giving some an incentive to use more wind. The first test will come at next month’s auction by PJM Interconnection LLC — the grid operator covering the region from Chicago to ...

  Bloomberg Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing raised more than $5.5 billion from investors, scoring the largest round of funding ever for a technology company to bankroll an expansion beyond China and into driver-less technology. Didi, which drove Uber Technologies Inc. out of China last year, is already one of the country’s best-funded private companies: its backers range from powerful state ...