Category: Business

LONDON Unilever (ULVR.L) (UNc.AS) is preparing a 6 billion pound ($7.44 billion) sale of some of its food brands, British newspapers reported on Saturday, without citing sources. The Anglo-Dutch company is planning to sell Flora margarine and Stork butter brands, the Sunday Times said. The Sunday Telegraph, which also

SAO PAULO Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) has asked suppliers in Brazil to clarify alleged cases of meatpackers bribing health officials to subvert inspections, the retailer said on Friday.

By Allison Lampert | MONTREAL MONTREAL Bombardier Inc would suffer "irreparable harm" to its global reputation if it loses a light train contract from a Toronto transportation agency, a senior company official said in recent court filings.    The Canadian plane and train maker, which is fighting to save the C$770 million ($573 million) contract with Toronto's Metrolinx, will seek an injunction

By Andrea Shalal | BERLIN BERLIN The German government plans to buy six Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) C-130J military transport planes for around 900 million euros ($966 million) starting in 2019 under a joint operating agreement with France, German government documents show.Germany and France first began working on the deal in October and announced broad outlines of their plans in February

Warren Buffett's compensation for running Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) edged up 4.0 percent last year to $487,881 reflecting the higher cost of keeping the world's second-richest person safe.Buffett's pay was disclosed in a Friday regulatory filing, in which Berkshire also recommended the rejection of three shareholder proposals at its May 6 annual meeting, including that it disclose its political contributions twice a year.Berkshire said Buffett's salary in 2016 was $100,000, the same amount he has received for more than a

By Caroline Valetkevitch | NEW YORK NEW YORK Small-cap stocks benefited from a dovish lining to the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates this past week, but strategists warn it will take more to make these pricey stocks outperform their larger brethren in the long haul.The Fed on Wednesday raised rates by a quarter of a percentage point, as

By Lisa Baertlein | LOS ANGELES LOS ANGELES McDonald's Corp (MCD.N) investors will vote soon on whether to give the franchisees who operate most of the fast-food chain's restaurants the opportunity to elect a board member, the proponent of a shareholder proposal said on Friday.The proposal, which faces long odds of success, is believed to be the first of its kind

STUTTGART, Germany Porsche (VOWG_p.DE) will invest hundreds of millions of euros in digital services to generate the revenue needed to offset an expected decline in car sales in the coming years, its finance chief said on Friday.Growing demand for ride-hailing and car-sharing will make the part-time use of vehicles, including Porsches, as convenient as ownership in seven to 10 years and that could dent new car sales, Porsche CFO Lutz Meschke said."To compensate for this decline, we have no choice

Tiffany & Co (TIF.N) reported fourth-quarter profit ahead of analysts' estimates as it sold more jewelry in Japan and China, sending shares to a 19-month high in morning trading on Friday.Sales in Japan were bolstered by the brand exposure Tiffany got through a popular television show last year and a strong yen helped boost spending by Japanese tourists in other regions, Tiffany's Chairman and interim Chief Executive Michael Kowalski said on a conference call.Chinese consumers spent more locally than as

By Julia Fioretti | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS Social media companies Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc and Twitter Inc will have to amend their terms of service for European users within a month or face the risk of fines, a European Commission official said on Friday.U.S. technology companies have faced tight scrutiny in Europe for the way they do business, from privacy to how

By Sijia Jiang | HONG KONG HONG KONG Chinese technology conglomerate LeEco is looking to sell a 49-acre U.S. Silicon Valley property less than a year after buying it from Yahoo Inc, sources said, in what is the latest effort by the firm to ride out a cash crunch.LeEco, one of China's most ambitious companies that grew from a Netflix-like video

By Jackie Cai and Adam Jourdan | SHANGHAI SHANGHAI China's annual consumer rights day TV show turned its spotlight on U.S. sports brand Nike Inc (NKE.N) for misleading advertising and Japanese brand Muji for selling food products allegedly sourced from part of Japan affected by radiation.The state-run China Central Television (CCTV) show - which can have brands and their corporate PR

NEW YORK Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive officer of DoubleLine Capital, said on Wednesday he expected a short-term rally in U.S. Treasuries and that investors should "use the strength" in U.S. stocks to take profits and diversify in overseas markets. "I am surprised with the relentless nature" of equities after the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, Gundlach said on CNBC. Gundlach, who oversees more than $101 billion in assets at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine, said he continued to short the shares

By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. government on Wednesday unsealed charges against two Russian spies and two criminal hackers for allegedly pilfering 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, The indictments, announced at a news conference in Washington, represent the first time the U.S. government has criminally charged Russian officials for cyber offenses.The content of at least 30 million

BERLIN German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Wednesday he was looking forward to the first meeting with his U.S. counterpart Steven Mnuchin on Thursday, adding he did not expect him to come to Germany with a closed mind on all matters. Asked about proposals to introduce a U.S.

By Kevin Yao and Ryan Woo | BEIJING BEIJING China's Premier Li Keqiang reassured investors on Wednesday that the world's second-largest economy is strong and not at risk of a hard landing, while stressing Beijing's support for globalization and free trade at a time of rising protectionism.Li also reiterated that China does not want a trade war with the United States,

TOKYO Shares in Toshiba Corp tumbled on Wednesday after it said it would consider a sale of Westinghouse but did not offer any clarity on whether it would proceed with a Chapter 11 filing for the U.S. nuclear unit - a move that could stem losses. Toshiba's failure to submit audited third-quarter earnings on Tuesday and its announcement of an expanded probe into Westinghouse also contributed to broad disappointment as did the Tokyo Stock Exchange's placing of the stock on

Ant Financial Services Group, the financial services affiliate of China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), said on Tuesday it remained committed to the consummation of its merger with U.S. money-transfer company MoneyGram International Inc (MGI.O), after Euronet Worldwide Inc (EEFT.O) trumped its offer.U.S. electronic payments company Euronet Worldwide launched a $1 billion bid for MoneyGram on Tuesday, saying that its all-American deal would face less regulatory scrutiny than a lower bid by Ant Financial.

NEW YORK U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday as oil prices dropped to their lowest since November and airlines pulled industrial stocks down as a blizzard hit the U.S. northeast. The Dow Jones Industrial

LONDON/PARIS An activist hedge fund has said it objects to plans by Walt Disney (DIS.N) to take full control of debt-laden Paris theme park operator Euro Disney (EDLP.PA), according to a letter seen by Reuters.Paris-based CIAM, which owns 1.4 percent of Euro Disney shares, has written to the board of the French company to object to what it believes are plans by Walt Disney to force out minority shareholders. It said it has the support of more than 5 percent

WOLFSBURG, Germany Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) Chief Executive Matthias Mueller said he is not ruling out talks with Fiat Chrysler (FCHA.MI) boss Sergio Marchionne about a possible merger."I am not ruling out a conversation," Mueller told reporters on Tuesday after the carmaker's annual earnings press conference in Wolfsburg. Marchionne has long

|By Arabian Post Staff| Paris Gallery  announced plans to open 30 new stores for the Group's various brands and subsidiaries, which will take the total number of  stores to 116 stores by 2021. The luxury retailer currently has  86 branches across the UAE, KSA, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Iraq, Azerbaijan and other countries.The UAE-based Group also confirmed that its total retail areas will reach 3.2 million square feet by 2021, compared with 2 million square feet currently."Since 2006, the Group has developed a

By Makiko Yamazaki and Taiga Uranaka | TOKYO TOKYO Japan's Toshiba Corp failed to submit audited third-quarter earnings for a second time on Tuesday, gaining a one month extension as its expands a probe into problems at its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse.With its financial woes only deepening, Toshiba said it would speed up looking at whether to sell a majority of

By Anna Irrera | NEW YORK NEW YORK Brokerage Charles Schwab Corp (SCHW.N) on Tuesday launched a service that combines its automated investment management technology with human advisors, as financial institutions race to offer digital financial advice.The service, called Schwab Intelligent Advisory, provides clients with a financial and investment plan, unlimited access to a human advisor via phone or video conference,

By Se Young Lee and Jane Chung | SEOUL SEOUL The head of South Korea's Samsung Group [SAGR.UL], Jay Y. Lee, may be languishing in a jail cell but he is allowed plenty of visitors, which may allow him to play a key role in corporate decisions even if he isn't running the conglomerate like he did before.Lee, who didn't attend

By Angela Moon | NEW YORK NEW YORK Airbnb, the leading online marketplace for short-term lodging, has no specific plans yet to go public, its chief executive officer Brian Chesky said on Monday."We don’t have any announcement to make. We are working to make sure that the company is ready," Chesky said at an event at the New York Exchange when

By Yashaswini Swamynathan The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were slightly lower on Monday as gains in financials shares - ahead of a widely expected interest rate hike - were weighed down by losses in drug stocks. The Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank's policy-setting board, is expected to lift interest rates by a quarter point to

By Tova Cohen and Ari Rabinovitch | JERUSALEM JERUSALEM U.S. chip giant Intel (INTC.O) has agreed to buy Israeli driverless technology firm Mobileye (MBLY.N) for $15.3 billion, the largest ever acquisition of an Israeli high-tech company.The $63.54 per share cash deal is the world's biggest purchase of a company solely focused on the autonomous driving sector. Mobileye accounts for 70 percent

BOSTON BlackRock Inc(BLK.N), which wields outsized clout as the world's largest asset manager, planned on Monday to put new pressure on companies to explain themselves on issues including how climate change could affect their business as well as boardroom diversity.The move by BlackRock, a powerful force in Corporate America with $5.1 trillion under management, could bolster efforts like climate-risk disclosure practices developed by the Financial Stability Board, the international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system.

SEOUL Oil prices dropped to their lowest in three months on Monday despite OPEC efforts to curb crude output, dragged down as U.S. drillers kept adding rigs.Brent crude LCOc1 had fallen 35 cents, or 0.68 percent, to its lowest since Nov. 30 at $51.02 per barrel by 0231 GMT. It closed the previous session down 1.6 percent at $51.37. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) CLc1 declined 42 cents, or 0.87 percent, to its weakest since late November at $48.07

By Jeremy Wagstaff | SINGAPORE SINGAPORE In today's so-called smart home, you can dim the lights, order more toothpaste or tell the kids to go to bed simply by talking to a small Wifi-connected speaker, such as Amazon's (AMZN.O) Echo or Google's (GOOGL.O) Home.This voice-first market - combining voice with artificial intelligence (AI) - barely existed in 2014. This year, Voice

LONDON HSBC Holdings Plc is lining up Mark Tucker, currently chief executive of insurer AIA Group Ltd, to be the next chairman of Europe's biggest bank, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Sunday. Regulators in Hong Kong and London have signaled they will approve the appointment, one of the sources said, paving the way for Tucker to take up the role in the autumn.Tucker, the former head of insurer Prudential, and once a trainee professional soccer player

By Angela Moon | NEW YORK NEW YORK For some millennial investors, loyalty to one of their favorite apps matters more than financial details in the case of Snap Inc.The stock of Snapchat's parent company has been on a roller-coaster ride since its market debut last week, surging more than 70 percent from the initial public offering price in the first

Eldridge Industries, the U.S. owner of Dick Clark Productions Inc, said on Friday that one of its affiliates terminated an agreement to sell off the TV production company to Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group.Eldridge, which also owns magazines such as the Billboard and the Hollywood Reporter, said the affiliate terminated the agreement after Wanda failed to honor contractual obligations.