A record number of potential blockbusters tanked at the box office this year, despite a slight increase in the total box office index, writes The Wall Street Journal. Since beginning of the year, fifteen films with a budget of over $ 100 million fell short of expectations at the box office against a total of eight for the same period last year. Among the most high-profile failures were "The...

Nearly 50% of major banks around the world are not ready to meet new requirements of international financial reporting standards, according to Deloitte. The rules, come into force in 2018, will lead to a sharp increase in reserves. Almost half of large banks around the world have declared ill-preparedness to implement the new International Financial Reporting Standards "IFRS 9 — Financial...

Having abandoned Turkey and Egypt for security reasons, millions of tourists ensured a record popularity of EU countries. The undeniable leader is Spain. The country won most of tourist flows that reoriented from troubled eastern Mediterranean (Turkey, Egypt) and North Africa (Tunisia) to Western Europe. The first half set another record here. During this period, 32.8 million foreign visitors,...

Eight major US banks are planning to join together as a single organization to fight off cyber-attacks more effectively. All of them are already members of Financial Services Information Sharing & Analysis Center, which brings together about 7 thousand financial organizations around the world. Yet, the industry giants consider such a large-scale form of cooperation inefficient. Eight largest...

The British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) wants to convince the citizens to change banks more often. Now, 60% of Britons have done their banking with one bank for 10 years. As a result of this, the market is dominated by the "big four". RBS, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC service 77% retail and 85% of corporate accounts, writes the FT. By 2018, CMA wants to give citizens an...

A report, published by American law firm Haynes and Boone, says that 90 oil and gas companies in the US and Canada have declared themselves bankrupt in the period from 3 January 2015 to 1 August 2016. Total debt of the companies amounted to about $ 66.5 billion, as calculated by the law firm. This includes cases where bankruptcy is governed by Chapter 7 of the US Bankruptcy Code (liquidation,...

As follows from the China General Administration of Customs data published today, rate of the Chinese economy exports decreased by 4.4% in July, and import rate - by 12.5% in annual terms. China's trade surplus last month rose to $ 52.31 billion, while expected average was $ 48 billion from $ 48.11 billion in June. China's export and import figures in July fell more than expected, as can be seen...

Mercedes is planning to launch its own line of electric vehicles, defying Tesla Motors, which tries to entice buyers of C-Class cars. German carmaker Mercedes is going to start production of two electric SUVs and two sedans, said to Bloomberg two sources familiar with the company’s plans. According to one of the sources, Mercedes intends to create a separate brand for its electric cars, but no...

On Tuesday, Hong Kong Bitfinex, one of the largest trade areas conducting transactions with Bitcoin, suspended its work due to a hacker attack. This resulted in almost 120 thousand BTC ($ 65 million) stolen from customer accounts. Quotes of the digital currency immediately collapsed: during the trading, value of one Bitcoin fell from $ 605 to $ 480. Bitcoin’s quotes on Tuesday fell back to...