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  RIYADH / Reuters Saudi Arabia has hired HSBC as financial advisor for its plans to privatise construction and management of school buildings, as it seeks to cut state spending in an era of low oil prices, a Saudi executive said on Tuesday. Tatweer Buildings Co, a state-owned firm affiliated with the Ministry of Education, aims to begin offering public-private ...

  Bloomberg The appetite for Australian banks to fund in the local bond market shows little sign of abating, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia selling A$2.65 billion ($1.95 billion) of notes less than two weeks into the new year. The deal is the earliest benchmark-sized local transaction from one of the country’s four largest banks since 2009 and follows a ...

  Singen / DPA Visit Alexander Fluegler at his house in Germany and you can’t help noticing one thing straight away — family and his Yenish ethnicity are vital to him. The walls of his home office are covered in photographs; Fluegler with his wife, Fluegler with his children, Fluegler with relatives, friends, elderly people, and young people. All beam ...

  DPA Coach Christa Osman wraps a tape measure around the player’s considerable girth and pronounces: “Dave Jones, waist size 14 centimetres less than three months ago.” It’s part of the pre-match ritual in the English town of Colchester, about a two-hour drive north-east of London. Ten shorts-and-jersey-clad men, ranging in build from very stocky to heavily overweight, have gathered ...

  Bloomberg Egypt’s urban consumer prices rose the fastest in at least six years in December, fueled in part by a 28.3 percent increase in food costs following the central bank’s decision to abandon currency controls two months ago. Annual urban inflation accelerated to 23.3 percent in December, while the monthly rate quickened to 3.1 percent, according to the state-run ...

  Bloomberg Total SA agreed to buy a stake in a project in Uganda from Tullow Oil Plc for $900 million as a recovery in crude prices accelerates the pace of deals in the energy industry. French oil major Total will acquire a controlling stake in the Lake Albert development, the companies said on Monday in separate statements. Total will ...

  Bloomberg Oil dropped the most in more than five weeks in New York amid concern about Iraqi compliance with OPEC production cuts. West Texas Intermediate futures fell 3.8 percent. Iraq’s oil exports from its southern ports in the Gulf reached a record high in December, Oil Minister Jabbar Al-Luaibi said in an e-mailed statement. Gulf oil producers Saudi Arabia, ...

  Bloomberg Iraq plans to raise crude exports from its southern port of Basra to an all-time high in February, keeping exports high even as OPEC production cuts take effect this month. The country’s State Oil Marketing Company (SOMO) plans to export 3.641 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude in February, according to trade sources and preliminary loading schedules ...

  Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP is no longer in talks to buy a $5 billion stake in assets owned by Energy Transfer Partners LP, people with knowledge of the matter said. The discussions fell through after the Wall Street Journal reported them last month, said one of the people, who asked not to identified because the information is private. The ...

  Bloomberg Indian real-estate websites PropTiger.com and Housing.com are merging to create the country’s top portal for residential listings and property services, as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. boosts its investment in the growing sector while Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. scales back. REA Group Ltd., an Australian real-estate company controlled by News Corp., is putting $50 million into the new ...