It should have been just another routine press conference for the European Commission. Right at the end of President Jean-Claude Juncker‘s remarks his phone rang. Juncker reached into his pocket while apologizing to his fellow politicians and journalists in the room. “It’s my wife,” he said. “Sorry.” After looking at his phone, Juncker realized it […]

Lloyds Banking Group‘s biggest half-year profit in eight years and an increase in interim dividends was clouded by ongoing misconduct charges, as the lender reported its first set of results since the bank exited government ownership. Britain’s largest retail bank reported Thursday a statutory pretax profit of 2.5 billion pounds ($3.28 billion) on Thursday, about […]

Volkswagen said group operating profit more than doubled in the second quarter, helped by cost cuts and higher-margin new models at its core namesake brand. Earnings before interest and tax jumped to 4.55 billion euros ($5.34 billion) from 1.90 billion a year earlier, VW said on Thursday, beating a 4.49-billion-euro consensus forecast in a Reuters […]

Demand for oil will not shrink overnight despite governments preparing for a transition into electric cars, the CEO of Shell told CNBC on Thursday. “Even in the most aggressive scenario, where policies really work at their best, where technology really makes a lot of strides in the near future, oil isn’t going to peak before […]

Roche, the biggest maker of cancer drugs, raised its 2007 outlook after first-half profit beat market expectations just as the Swiss group’s ageing portfolio of blockbuster medicines faces increasing competition from biosimilar copies. “In 2017, Roche now expects sales to grow mid-single digit, at constant exchange rates. Core earnings per share are targeted to grow […]

Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova is now one of the world’s most recognizable faces, having been on the cover of Vogue magazine more than 70 times and starring in lucrative advertising campaigns for brands including Calvin Klein, Versace and L’Oreal. But growing up in the 1980s in Nizhny Novgorod, a city 400km east of Moscow, Vodianova […]

The U.K.’s International Trade Secretary Liam Fox is to visit Mexico Wednesday to launch discussions for a post-Brexit deal as part of the Britain’s ongoing efforts to secure its trading future outside of the EU. Fox is to meet with Mexico’s Minister of the Economy Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal to discuss continuing trade cooperation between the […]

The European Commission said on Wednesday it would start legal action against Poland over a law reforming the judiciary that undermines the independence of judges and therefore breaks EU treaty rules. The Commission also sent Poland a new recommendation under a separate rule-of-law monitoring procedure asking it to address its concerns about several issues questioned […]

The U.K. economy grew 0.3 percent in the second-quarter of this year, in line with expectations. However, the Office for National Statistics noted a “notable slowdown” in the first half of 2017. The U.K. had grown at a pace of 0.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. The slight uptick in the British […]

Any Russian response to fresh sanctions from the U.S. is unlikely to cause any major harm for American investors and could merely be a symbolic gesture, according to one political analyst. Moscow stepped up its war of words against Washington Wednesday after the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of imposing new sanctions. […]