The European Commission published the names of eight Russians, including some of President Vladimir Putin's associates, and three companies which will have their assets frozen as part of sanctions against Russia's actions in eastern Ukraine. The people on the list include Arkady Rotenberg who is Putin's long-time judo partner, and already on a US sanctions list since March.
Updated 5 Years ago

Nintendo Co. sank to a worse-than-expected loss for the fiscal first quarter on lagging Wii U and 3DS video-game machine sales. But the Japanese company stuck to its annual forecasts Wednesday for a 20-billion yen (US$196-million) profit on 590-billion yen (US$5.8-billion) sales. Kyoto-based Nintendo reported a 9.92-billion yen (US$97.3-million) April-June loss compared with an 8.62-billion yen profit a year earlier.
Updated 5 Years ago

BNP Paribas' results were hit by a record U.S. fine in July, which helped tip the bank to a 4.32 billion euro ($5.76 billion) loss in the second quarter. The French bank said the impact of one-off items was "very significant", and highlighted its huge $9 billion settlement with U.S. authorities for breaching sanctions against dealing with Sudan, Cuba and Iran.
Updated 5 Years ago

Banco Espírito Santo has posted a first-half net loss of €3.58 billion ($4.8 billion) that exposes the full extent of the Portuguese lender's exposure to the financial woes engulfing its main shareholder, the Espírito Santo family group. BES, Portugal's largest listed lender by assets, said "extraordinary events" had resulted in impairment and contingency costs totaling €4.25 billion and had cut its capital strength to below the regulatory minimum.
Updated 5 Years ago

McDonald’s Corp. lost a $27 million jury verdict in Texas over a claim that lax security at one of its restaurants led to the deaths of two teenagers, an award litigators say is unlikely to survive appeal. The victims in the case were Denton James Ward, 18, who was beaten to death by a mob at a McDonald’s in February 2012, and his girlfriend, Lauren Bailey Crisp, 19, who died in a traffic accident in a futile attempt to bring Ward to a hospital.
Updated 5 Years ago

Meda AB (MEDAA), the Swedish drugmaker that rejected a takeover approach from Mylan Inc., agreed to buy Italian family-owned pharmaceutical company Rottapharm Madaus for about 21.2 billion kronor ($3.1 billion) to add consumer-health products. The Rovati family, which controls all of Rottapharm, will receive 15.3 billion kronor in cash, 30 million Meda shares valued at 3.3 billion kronor and another payment in January 2017 of 2.6 billion kronor, Solna, Sweden-based Meda said in a statement today. Rottapharm this month canceled a planned initial public offering after the sale failed to achieve the valuation the family wanted.
Updated 5 Years ago

Developers of software used to access Tor - an otherwise hard-to-reach part of the internet have disclosed that an attack on the network may have unmasked users for five months. The Tor Project said that it believed the assault was designed to de-anonymise the net addresses of people operating or visiting hidden sites.
Updated 5 Years ago

The US and EU have banned the export to Russia of hi-tech oil equipment needed in Arctic, deep sea, and shale extraction projects. This will leave Western companies, which have an estimated $35 billion invested in Russian oil, in a bind. New stage three sanctions won’t immediately slash Russian oil production, which at 10.55 million barrels per day is the world’s largest, but could derail future foreign investment in Russia’s oil industry. Russia is home to the largest combined oil and gas reserves in the world.
Updated 5 Years ago

The Tata conglomerate, India's biggest business group, has said it will invest $35bn (£20.7bn) over the next three years in areas including retail and defence. The expansion plans were unveiled by chairman Cyrus Mistry at an internal meeting this week and confirmed via an emailed statement.
Updated 5 Years ago

Profits at Samsung Electronics fell 20% in the second quarter, hurt mainly by a slowdown in smartphone sales and a strong Korean currency. It made a net profit of 6.25 trillion won ($6.1bn; £3.6bn) in the April-to-June period, down from 7.77 trillion won a year ago. When compared to the previous quarter, its profit was down 17%.
Updated 5 Years ago