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RIYADH:

Vox Cinemas, owned by Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim, has received a licence to operate cinemas in Saudi Arabia and will open a four-screen multiplex theatre in Riyadh in the “coming days”, the company said on Thursday.

Vox is investing 2 billion riyals ($533 million) to open 600 screens in the next five years in the conservative Muslim kingdom, which lifted a nearly 40-year ban on commercial cinemas last year as part of broad social and economic reforms. (RTRS)

FRANKFURT:

German pharmaceutical and chemical company Merck says it has agreed to sell its global consumer health business to Procter & Gamble for 3.4 billion euros ($4.2 billion) in cash.

The deal means Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, whose over-thecounter brands include Pepto-Bismol and NyQuil, acquires a business that saw 6 percent organic sales growth in 2015-2017. P&G CEO David Taylor said that the company “liked the steady, broad-based growth” of the over-thecounter health care market and that the acquisition would bolster the company’s geographic reach and product portfolio. (AP)

DUBLIN:

Ireland’s government will use its majority shareholding to vote down Allied Irish Banks’ (AIB) plans to introduce a deferred share plan for senior executives that the bank says would mitigate the risks it faces in retaining key staff.

AIB fears it may lose staff to international banks that are moving operations to Dublin as a result of Brexit, and do not fall under the cap on executive pay and ban on bonuses that Dublin introduced during its banking crisis a decade ago. (RTRS)

LONDON:

British department store group Debenhams on Thursday warned on the full-year outlook for the second time in four months and cut its dividend as it reported a 52 percent slump in first-half profit.

The retailer, which issued a profit warning in January, also said Matt Smith, its chief financial officer, was quitting the retailer to become finance chief of rival Selfridges.

The 240-year old Debenhams is one year into a turnaround programme led by Chief Executive Sergio Bucher, a former Amazon and Inditex executive. (RTRS)

LONDON:

Freshly London-listed Energean Oil & Gas is boosting its Greek output and expects first gas from its Israeli fields in the first quarter of 2021, making it one of the biggest independent energy firms operating in the eastern Mediterranean.

Energean listed last month, raising $460 million to develop two Israeli offshore gas fields, Karish and Tanin, which have potential reserves of up to 2.4 trillion cubic feet of gas and 32.8 million barrels of light oil and condensate.

It also won five more Israeli blocks nearby and plans to publish their contingent resource data in the next few months, Chief Executive Mathios Rigas told Reuters in a phone interview. (RTRS)

LONDON:

Advertising group Publicis and industrial stocks made gains on Thursday as strong results spurred them higher, while the main European indices stalled, showing signs of fatigue after a two-day rally took them to sixweek highs.

Earnings dominated trading, with Swiss industrial equipment maker ABB and French electric components firm Schneider the biggest boosts to the panEuropean STOXX 600 index.

ABB rose 3.9 percent after reporting its best start to the year since 2015, while Schneider’s profit beat sent its shares up 2 percent. Shares in ABB rival Siemens also rose 1.5 percent. (RTRS)

LONDON:

Sky Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said he had no interest in running WPP, the world’s biggest ad group which is searching for a new chief executive after the abrupt departure of Martin Sorrell on Saturday.

Whoever is named as Sorrell’s successor will inherit a difficult task, with WPP publishing its weakest results since the financial crisis in March and analysts speculating that the group could be broken up without Sorrell at its helm. A WPP insider suggested that Sorrell’s departure could represent a new beginning for the company, saying he was sad that Sorrell was leaving but there was “a mood of change”. (RTRS)

THE HAGUE:

Unilever, the consumer goods multinational whose brands include Dove, Knorr and Ben & Jerry’s, says it is planning a share buyback worth up to 6 billion euros ($7.4 billion) later this year.

Unilever said Thursday that sales in the first quarter were hit by unfavorable currency exchange rates and fell 5.2 percent to 12.6 billion euros ($15.6 billion) compared with the same period last year. However, the company added that underlying sales growth was 3.4 percent. Unilever, which last month announced plans to consolidate its global headquarters in Rotterdam instead of London, also raised its quarterly dividend by 8 percent. (AP)

GENEVA:

Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis says net income jumped 12 percent in the first quarter, pointing to explosive growth in its heart-failure drug Entresto as its rollout continues, and powerful double-digit percentage growth for psoriasis drug Cosentyx.

The Basel-based powerhouse, one of the world’s largest drug companies, said Thursday that first-quarter net profit under new CEO Vas Narasimhan rose to $2.03 billion when accounting for currency changes, up from $1.67 billion a year earlier.

Net sales rose 4 percent to $12.69 billion. (AP)

BEIJING:

Qualcomm Inc’s latest proposal for its $44 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors “has difficulty” resolving concerns of Chinese antimonopoly regulators, a government spokesman Thursday.

The Commerce Ministry spokesman’s comment was the first Chinese statement about the US chipmaker’s proposed acquisition since a trade dispute blew up between Beijing and President Donald Trump over technology policy.

China is the final major government withholding approval of the deal. It would allow Qualcomm, which flourished by supplying chips to the mobile phone boom, to broaden its product range into other industries. (AP)