BUSINESS NEWS APRIL 11TH, 2016
Wall Street closed slightly lower on Monday, with gains in materials and banks countered by declines in consumer staples shares, as investors girded for the start of an earnings season expected to be gloomy.Equities gave up gains late in the day with the three major indexes finishing in negative territory after posting losses last week.Investors were looking for cues from the first-quarter earnings season, beginning with Alcoa's (AA.N) report after the bell.The metals company reported a lower quarterly profit, with results hurt by low alumina and aluminum prices, and its shares fell more than 2 percent in extended trading.Profits at S&P 500 companies are expected to have fallen 7.7 percent in the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
RBS TO CLOSE DOWN INDIA BUSINESS
Royal Bank of Scotland will close its corporate banking operations in India as part of a plan to sell or shut businesses in two-thirds of the countries it operates in, a person familiar with the situation said. RBS, which was briefly the world's largest bank by assets, has spent the eight years since a 45 billion pound ($64 billion) government bailout cutting costs and reorganizing. It is closing the Indian business after failing to find a buyer.
CHICAGO Metals company Alcoa Inc (AA.N) on Monday reported a lower quarterly profit, with results hurt by low commodity prices, the strong U.S. dollar and plant closures or divestments, and it also lowered its 2016 outlook for global sales in the aerospace industry.The company's shares fell nearly 4 percent in after-market trading.Alcoa will split in two in the second half of this year.The company's traditional smelting business will retain the Alcoa name, while a new firm named Arconic will retain the added-value aerospace and automotive business involving strong, light alloys that the company has worked hard to build in recent years.Alcoa said it now expects global sales in the aerospace industry to grow in a range of 6 to 8 percent this year. That is down from its last forecast in the fourth quarter of 2015 of growth between 8 and 9 percent.
FRANCE SEEKS G20 TAX HAVEN BLACKLIST
France will seek tougher EU sanctions on people who help to facilitate tax evasion and a G20 blacklist of uncooperative tax havens, the Finance Ministry said on Monday following the Panama Papers leaks.Countries on the blacklist should be subject to "counter-measures coordinated by different states", the ministry said in a statement outlining the issues that Finance Minister Michel Sapin will push at meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the Group of 20 leading economies this week in Washington.Some 96 jurisdictions have committed to automatically exchange tax information with other governments in the next two years, with some traditional offshore centers such as the British Virgin Islands due to start as early adopters next year.