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  DOHA / Reuters Gulf carrier Qatar Airways and Boeing will hold a news conference on Friday, a spokeswoman for Qatar Airways told Reuters on Wednesday, as a big sale of Boeing widebody jetliners looked close to being clinched. Qatar Airways is in the process of firming up the order, which was delayed by the Qatari government in an effort ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, cut pricing for November oil sales to Asia and Northwest Europe and for most grades to other regions amid a global supply glut. State-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco, lowered its official pricing for Arab Light crude to Asia by 25 cents a barrel to 45 cents less ...

  CAIRO / Reuters Beltone Financial, Egypt’s largest asset manager, said on Tuesday it had acquired 60 percent of New York-based brokerage firm Auerbach Grayson & Company. Beltone has 30 billion Egyptian pounds ($3.38 billion) in assets under management and has executed over 100 billion pounds in M&A and capital markets transactions. It was acquired by billionaire businessman Naguib Sawiris’s ...

  Reuters Intensive care wards in Yemen’s hospitals are filled with emaciated children hooked up to monitors and drips – victims of food shortages that could get even worse due to a reorganisation of the central bank that is worrying importers. With food ships finding it hard to get into Yemen’s ports due to a virtual blockade by the Saudi-led ...

  Bloomberg Iran’s top renewable-energy authority denied that it’s signed any agreement covering electricity generation projects with a Swiss developer that has said it obtained power-purchase agreements for 370 megawatts of installations. The Renewable Energy Organization of Iran, which is known as Suna, hasn’t signed any deal with MECI Group International, said Jafar Mohamadnejad Sigaroudi, the deputy in charge of ...

  Singapore / AFP Britain’s shock decision to leave the European Union will not be as damaging to developing Asia’s economies as feared, the World Bank said Wednesday as it increased its growth forecast for the region this year. Countries in the Mekong region led by Myanmar are projected to expand at the fastest pace in the next three years, ...

Tokyo / AFP Sompo Holdings said on Wednesday it would buy Bermuda-based Endurance Specialty Holdings for $6.3 billion, becoming the latest Japanese firm to make an overseas acquisition as it faces slowing growth at home. The all-cash deal for New York-listed Endurance, which has a strong presence in the lucrative US market, is expected to be completed by the end ...

  Geneva / AFP Switzerland said on Wednesday it had widened its probe into Malaysia’s scandal-tainted state investment fund, 1MDB, with transactions worth $800 million under scrutiny and evidence pointing to fraud through “a Ponzi scheme”. The Swiss attorney general opened an investigation into the troubled 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) in August 2015 following allegations that some of the money ...

  Seoul / AFP Samsung’s drug-manufacturing unit plans to raise as much as $2.0 billion in November with what looks set to be South Korea’s third-largest initial public offering (IPO). Samsung Biologics, a contract manufacturer of biotech drugs for global pharmaceutical firms, had announced the IPO plan back in April — with parent Samsung Group seeking new growth engines as ...

  New Delhi / AFP On a scorching rooftop in a smart neighbourhood in the Indian capital, 40 Delhiites with an eye for a bargain peer over auction tables creaking with used, broken and half-eaten items, the front line of a thriving second-hand economy. The auctioneer’s voice rises to a frenzied pitch as the numbers soar higher, each item wielded ...