Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the world’s second largest company by 2011 revenue, is set to invest around $1 billion annually in its upstream businesses in China starting from this year, said its CEO Peter Voser to the China Daily on Tuesday, citing the company’s desire to capitalise on the increasing demand for natural gas across the nation.
The world’s largest home-furniture retailer, IKEA, has announced plans to more than double its investment in renewable energy, with the aim of producing as much renewable energy as it consumes by 2020.
As part of its sustainability plan, IKEA will invest 1.5 billion euros ($1.95 billion) to meet its 2009 – 2015 renewable energy goal, up from an earlier commitment of 590 million euros.
Credit card giant American Express (Amex) has agreed to pay $85 million to around 250,000 consumers for violating consumer protection laws in marketing, billing and debt collection practices, reported the New York Times on Monday, with the financial institution also expected to pay up to $27.5 million in fines to regulators.
A loan worth nearly $2 billion from the China Development bank is being delayed as concerns over the effect of tax policies in the United States surface.
The China Development Bank is known for its generous loans to Chinese state-owned companies but, as part of its commercialisation process, has in recent months been involved in some of the largest private and commercial deals in Asia.
Standard Chartered bank’s large shareholder, the Singapore-government-run investment fund Temasek Holdings, is ready to sell off its entire stake in the troubled British bank, claimed a report by the Financial Times on Monday, with the fund keen to reduce its exposure to financial services amid the present economic uncertainty.
The legal dispute between tech giants Apple Inc and Samsung Electronic Co is set to take another turn after both companies expressed dissatisfaction at a U.S. court verdict last month, which awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages for patents infringed by Samsung with some of its mobile devices.
According to the Financial Times, Apple is seeking another $707 million in damages, along with a U.S.-wide sales ban on 26 smartphones and tablets produced by Samsung.
Ever received an ad or an email from a company that seemed to be designed specially for you? These days, many retailers are gathering and storing information about their clients through barcode technology, which will help them determine exactly how best to market to you, which coupons you’re most likely to use, and what you’re most likely to buy next based on previous purchasing habits.
Commodity prices swelled in the last decade – mostly on the back of insatiable demand from China. Yet, if you exclude China, global demand for commodities like steel, for example, grew only 2 percent per year in the last twenty years, implying that China accounted for almost all the increase in global demand in the last two decades. With a China slowdown and rebalancing on the cards, could a subsequent commodity market crash be imminent?
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc has called off attempts to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic for this year at least, said the New York Times on Monday, after a spill containment dome was damaged during a recent testing accident.
U.S. fast food giant McDonald’s Corp will begin posting calorie information for its entire menu at U.S. stores starting from next week, reported Bloomberg News on Wednesday, in order to pre-empt a regulation that could require chains to disclose the information anyway.
