LONDON: EU regulators confirmed yesterday they will cap bonuses of bankers earning more than ¤500,000 a year and added other conditions to make the pay ceiling harder to smash. The headline figure was leaked last Friday, triggering warnings by banks in the European Union that they may lose staff to other parts of the world, and that London, the bloc’s top financial c

NEW YORK: JPMorgan Chase shareholders yesterday rejected a proposal to split the chairman and chief executive roles, handing bank chief Jamie Dimon a big victory. The shareholder proposal to split his two roles won just 32.2 percent of votes cast, according to preliminary results released at the bank’s annual meeting in Tampa, Florida. Shareholders at the nation’s largest bank b

A Streetscooter, a zero-emission E-car built for German postal and logistics group Deutsche Post (DHL) in Bonn yesterday. DHL yesterday introduced their pilot electrical car project for postal deliveries. 

LONDON: British mobile phone giant Vodafone yesterday reported a 90-percent plunge in annual net profit after taking a vast impairment charge relating to poor business in debt-laden eurozone nations Italy and Spain. Updating the market, Vodafone was meanwhile silent surrounding recent speculation that it may offload its sizeable stake in Verizon Wireless, the US mobile operator. Profit

  Al KHOBAR: State-run Saudi Aramco has awarded India’s Larsen & Toubro  (L&T) a contract to build facilities including a gas processing plant for its Midyan gas field, state news agency SPA reported. The world’s top oil exporter is boosting its output of the natural gas needed to meet rapidly rising domestic power demand and supply raw materials to its str

MILAN: Italy-based truck and tractor maker Fiat Industrial plans to lower its tax bill by shifting its residence to Britain after a planned merger with unit CNH, a move that drew  angry reactions from politicians and unions on its home turf. The criticism tapped into a widening debate on corporate tax avoidance which has become a hot political topic in some western countries in recent

Workers apply the finishing touches to displays during the 13th Annual European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition press day, at the Geneva Palexpo Conference Centre, adjacent to the Geneva Airport, in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday.

LONDON: Irish biotechnology company Elan announced a series of deals yesterday to boost growth, in the face of a $6bn hostile takeover approach by US group Royalty Pharma. “Elan Corporation plc today announces a series of transactions designed to decisively transform and advance the company,” it said in a statement. The Dublin-based group said it was buying two small drugmak

NEW YORK, LONDON:  Crude oil prices rose yesterday, reversing early losses to trade higher by late morning in New York as the dollar weakened, but ample supplies of crude oil were expected to limit gains. “The dollar’s move has been pretty strong lately, maybe you’re seeing a little more profit taking,” said Gene McGillian, an analyst with Tradition Energy in St

DUBLIN: A sharp rise in earnings from add-on charges for items such as baggage and pre-assigned seating helped boost Ryanair’s earnings above expectations in the past year, lifting its shares to a record high. Ryanair, which helped pioneer a business model in which low ticket prices are supplemented with charges for extras like printing boarding passes and carrying luggage, flew 5 per

  TOKYO: US investment banking giant Goldman Sachs said yesterday it will start investing in Japanese renewable energy projects, with a reported $2.9bn outlay over the next five years. The injection comes after Japan’s government stepped into the green power market to set minimum prices in a bid to encourage the sector as the country seeks to rebalance its post-Fukushima ener

NEW YORK: Yahoo! unveiled its biggest deal yet under chief Marissa Mayer yesterday, snagging blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1bn in a move to get younger users into the orbit of the struggling Internet pioneer. The two firms confirmed weekend reports of the tie-up, a deal which keeps the fast-growing Tumblr largely independent while integrating technology and advertising opportunities. &ldq

Sami Pienimaki, one of the founders of Jolla company, and his brother Tomi Pienimaki (right), the company’s CEO, present the new Jolla smartphone in Helsinki yesterday HELSINKI: A group of ex-Nokia employees who quit over the company’s decision to abandon the planned MeeGo operating system in favour of Windows presented their own smartphone yesterday, hoping to rival the sect

LONDON: After months of speculation, Vodafone’s Vittorio Colao will be under pressure next week to set out whether he may sell its prized stake in Verizon Wireless in what would be one of the biggest deals ever. Chief executive for five years, Colao has said only that he has an “open mind” on Vodafone’s 45-percent stake in the US operator, whose majority owner, Veriz

  ABU DHABI: Abu Dhabi National Energy Company (Taqa) said yesterday it was looking at ways to improve the liquidity of its shares but had not taken any steps to remove a barrier to foreigners holding its stock. Abu Dhabi newspaper The National said yesterday that Taqa was considering a dual listing on the London stock exchange and an opening up of its free-float of shares domestic

PARIS: French food industry group Danone said yesterday it is ramping up its presence in the growing Chinese market for dairy products with two deals to tap sales of yogurt and health foods. Danone said it was investing about ¤325m ($418m) to strengthen its place in the potentially vast Chinese market, via two joint ventures in distribution and production. The intention is to build o

  NEW DELHI: India’s Just Dial search engine launched yesterday an initial public offer to raise up to $174m, marking the biggest share offering so far in 2013 and one of the largest by an Indian Internet firm. The Mumbai-based local business search firm, which began operations in the mid-1990s as a telephone-based directory and moved later to the Internet, is offloading one-

LONDON: This week offers the first major gauge of the health of the global economy for May, with big implications for policymakers and investors banking on a steady pickup in activity during the second half of 2013. Disappointing factory output and service sector data in April, particularly in the euro zone but also in the United States and China, have pointed to a world economy slowing aft

Junior debt holders of Spanish lender Bankia shout slogans during a protest outside a bank branch in central Madrid yesterday. MADRID: Many duped savers at Spanish lender Bankia are shunning a state-supervised compensation scheme in favour of expensive lawsuits, prolonging a mis-selling scandal and complicating efforts to restore faith in the banking system. The disputes over mis-sel

LONDON: An independent Scotland would have a vastly oversized financial sector that would leave it vulnerable to a Cyprus-style banking crisis, Britain’s finance ministry says. Before a referendum due in September 2014 on whether Scotland should split from the United Kingdom, the British government is analysing the impact of independence on Scotland, which has a population of about fi