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  London / AFP European stocks turned flat on Wednesday but London coasted higher on the back of a Santa Rally in subdued trade after a long Christmas holiday. The British capital’s benchmark FTSE 100 index of top blue-chip firms won 0.4 percent from last Friday’s close, as traders returned from a four-day holiday weekend. Frankfurt and Paris, which had ...

  Bloomberg South Korea’s antitrust regulator slapped a record 1.03 trillion won ($853 million) fine on Qualcomm Inc. for violating antitrust laws, the latest in a string of government actions that threaten the US chipmaker’s most profitable business. The South Korean Fair Trade Commission said on Wednesday that the company licensed its key patents only to mobile-phone makers and didn’t ...

  Bloomberg Toshiba shares dived more than 20 percent on Wednesday in their second straight double-digit plunge, as the company said it may book a one-time loss of several billion dollars over its US nuclear business. The stock price dropped by 20.42 percent to 311.60 yen, the largest fall allowed for a single day, about 30 minutes after the opening ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s industrial output rose the most in five months in November as export volumes rebounded sharply, pointing to an expected economic expansion in the fourth quarter. Industrial production increased 1.5 percent in November from a month earlier (forecast +1.7 percent). Output is forecast to rise 2 percent in December and 2.2 percent in January. Retail sales rose 1.7 ...

Bloomberg Pakistan’s fourth nuclear power plant went online on Wednesday, a joint collaboration with China that adds 340 megawatts to the national grid as part of the goverment’s efforts to end a growth-sapping energy deficit. Pakistan is one of the few developing countries pursuing atomic energy in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, as it ...

  Bloomberg The world’s No. 2 economy showed improvement in the fourth quarter with gains across all industries, according to the China Beige Book. Revenues, profits, jobs and capital expenditures improved from the third quarter while new orders were stable, according to the private survey released by CBB International, which collects anecdotal accounts similar to those in the Federal Reserve ...

  Bloomberg It was a tumultuous autumn for Jim Carr. Canada’s pipeline point man was a key player in decisions by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to approve a major liquefied natural gas project in September and a pair of crude-oil proposals from Kinder Morgan Inc. and Enbridge Inc. last month, preceded by a string of regulatory and environmental concessions ...

  Bloomberg Oil traded near the highest since July last year amid optimism OPEC and 11 other producing nations will cut output as promised, helping eliminate a global supply glut. Futures rose as much as 0.6 percent in New York, advancing for an eighth day in the longest winning streak in almost seven years. Crude inventories should return to equilibrium ...

  CAIRO / Reuters Egyptian Oil Minister Tarek El Molla has signed three offshore oil and gas exploration and production deals worth a total of at least $220 million with France’s Total, Britain’s BP, and Italian oil major ENI’s Egyptian subsidiary IEOC, the ministry said on Wednesday. The deals include drilling for six wells and a signing bonus of $9 ...

Bloomberg BP Plc will pay A$1.785 billion ($1.3 billion) for Woolworths Ltd.’s network of Australian gas stations in a deal that will cement the London-based oil company as one of the nation’s biggest fuel providers. The British energy company will acquire 527 fuel outlets that are currently supplied by rival Caltex Australia Ltd., as well as 16 development sites, according ...