A committee set up by the British Treasury to choose a new administrator for LIBOR gave the job to NYSE Euronext, which operates the New York Stock Exchange. It is paying a token $1.50 for the honor and expects to start managing the international benchmark interest rate early next year. The British Bankers' Association has overseen LIBOR since the 1980s, but the scandal surrounding the manipulation of the rate by traders dented its reputation.
The global asset-management industry grew to a record $62.4 trillion last year, according to the Boston Consulting Group, passing the previous high set in 2007, before the financial crisis. Most of the gain is explained by roaring equity markets, which increased the value of assets under management.
China's Ministry of Public Security accused GlaxoSmithKline, a British drugs company, of bribing doctors in three cities to prescribe its medicines to patients and of receiving kickbacks through conference fees. China has been an important growth market for GSK over the past decade.
Royal Dutch Shell appointed Ben van Beurden as its new chief executive. Van Beurden, who has spent a large part of his 30 years at the energy company working at its liquefied-natural-gas division, had not been regarded as a front-runner.
The chief executive of Barnes & Noble resigned, two weeks after its latest quarterly earnings report made for troubling reading. The book retailer's Nook e-reader doubled its losses as it struggled to compete with the Kindle and iPad, a blow to the company's hopes that digital publishing would offset falling sales of books.
Tribune became the latest media company to announce it is splitting in two, with a plan to separate its newspaper arm from its television and Internet division. The publisher of the Los Angeles Times and other dailies gets around two-thirds of its sales from newspapers and websites, but only a fifth of its operating profit. It recently bought 19 local TV stations in a $2.7 billion deal.
Global personal-computer shipments continued to slump, falling by about 11 percent in the second quarter, according to Gartner and IDC, two tech-market research firms. Both also reported that China's Lenovo has overtaken Hewlett-Packard as the world's biggest seller of PCs.
Political economy
The IMF shaved its forecast of growth for the world economy from a previous estimate in April. It lowered its projections for this year in America, the eurozone, China, Brazil, Russia and India, though Britain, Canada and Japan all had their GDP growth figures revised up. The IMF's list of looming risks includes a sharper slowdown in emerging markets and the possible tapering of quantitative easing in America, which, it said, could lead to "sustained capital-flow reversals".
Meanwhile, the cooling of China's economy was underlined by official figures showing that its exports unexpectedly fell by 3.1 percent in June compared with the same month last year. Imports were down by 0.7 percent.
The European Commission unveiled its proposed "single resolution mechanism" that would give it the authority to wind down failing banks in the eurozone with the support of a new cross-border fund. Germany is opposed, arguing that such an expansion of the commission's powers would require a treaty change. France, Italy and Spain are fairly happy with the idea.
The man who was in charge of Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant when it was hit by a tsunami in March 2011 died of esophageal cancer. Masao Yoshida had remained on the site when the tsunami struck, ignoring orders to stop pumping seawater into one of the reactors. A spokesman for TEPCO, the operator of the plant, said his cancer was not linked to his work there.
A study by Chinese and Western researchers found that heavy air pollution in northern China has reduced people's average life expectancy by five years. It said the pollution, mainly from coal, is 55 percent higher in the north of China than in the south.
Colombia extradited Daniel "El Loco" (The Madman) Barrera to the United States to face charges of trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine.
