(MENAFN - AFP) British mobile phone giant Vodafone on Tuesday 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 ...

(MENAFN - AFP) Microsoft offers a glimpse Tuesday at a new-generation Xbox as videogame consoles evolve into home entertainment centers and adapt to competition from smartphones and tablets.

A tented stage has been set up at the technology giant's headquarters in the city of Redmond in Washington State for an "Xbox Reveal" event to play out just weeks before a major annual ...

(MENAFN - AFP) JPMorgan Chase shareholders Tuesday 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 ...

(MENAFN - AFP) Japanese mobile operator Softbank said Tuesday it planned to raise $3.9 billion through a record bond issuance in June to finance its proposed takeover of US firm Sprint Nextel.

Softbank, which is under pressure from Sprint shareholders to raise its bid, will sell five-year debt to Japanese investors after a similar issuance worth 300 billion yen in March, ...

(MENAFN - AFP) Low-cost European airline Ryanair is looking at introducing flights between Israel and Poland to cater for Israeli schoolchildren visiting the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

"It seems that every Israeli child has to go to Poland to go and see Auschwitz. We can help them with that," said the carrier's deputy chief executive, Howard Millar.

Although ...

(MENAFN - AFP) Indonesia on Tuesday approved the purchase by Singapore's DBS of a 40 percent stake in Bank Danamon, but demanded the city-state open up its financial sector before any full takeover.

More than a year after DBS launched its bid to make the biggest ever bank acquisition in Indonesia, central bank governor Darmin Nasution said it could acquire part of Danamon ...

(MENAFN - AFP) SkyWest, Inc. announced Tuesday it has struck an agreement with Brazil's Embraer for the purchase of 100 new E175 jet aircraft, with 40 considered firm deliveries.

The deal also includes options for an additional 100 E175 aircraft from the Brazilian planemaker and would be valued at $8.3 billion if all 200 jets are ordered, the US company said in a statement.

Deliveries ...

(MENAFN - AFP) European stock markets diverged on Tuesday, as London shot past its 13-year peak amid stimulus policies from top world central banks and a barrage of company results, dealers said.

"Global equity markets have held their levels this morning, as the growing appetite for risk assets continues despite the generally weak macro environment," said analyst Matt ...

(MENAFN - AFP) French group GDF Suez led an attack by eight leading European power companies on EU energy policy on Tuesday, saying it had "failed" and was destroying parts of the sector.

In what he described as a "solemn appeal", the chief executive of GDF Suez Gerard Mestrallet told the Le Monde daily in an interview that European leaders had to wake up to the fact that ...

(MENAFN - AFP) A Nobel prize-winning scientist Tuesday played down "shock-horror scenarios" that a new virus strain will emerge with the potential to kill millions of people.

Peter Doherty, who jointly won the Nobel prize in 1996 for his work on how the immune system combats virus-infected cells, said the worst-case scenario was a new virus with a high mortality rate that ...