Global business

February 28, 2011 at 10:34PM

Apple's board of directors was challenged by investors at the annual general meeting to reveal the succession plan it has drawn up to replace Steve Jobs should the chief executive not return from medical leave. In a vote, shareholders backed the board, which argues that disclosing the plan now would only help competitors. Jobs did not attend the meeting.

Wal-Mart reported another poor quarter in America, with revenue dipping again from stores that have been open for at least a year. Sales from the retailer's international business, which accounts for around a quarter of its profit, boosted its overall results.

Making good on its recent undertaking to conduct more of its business in emerging markets, BP bought a stake in the maritime natural gas assets owned by India's Reliance Industries. Potentially worth around $9 billion, the deal is one of the biggest-ever foreign investments in India.

BHP Billiton boosted its energy portfolio by agreeing to pay $4.8 billion for shale gas assets in Arkansas. The mining company earns a fifth of its profit from oil and gas resources.

Huawei, China's biggest maker of telecom equipment, reversed course and accepted the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that it revoke its acquisition of assets owned by 3Leaf, an American technology company. Huawei had already bought the assets, but officials at the Pentagon asked the committee, which considers the national security implications of takeovers, for its opinion. If Huawei had persisted, the White House would have had to rule on the deal.

HP's share price fell sharply after it delivered a weaker-than-expected set of quarterly earnings that showed sales declining in the company's IT services and personal computing businesses. HP shaved $1.5 billion from its revenue target for the year.

Joseph Flom, a legendary lawyer who participated in many of the big hostile takeovers of the 1970s and 1980s, died at age 87. Flom's clients included T. Boone Pickens, James Goldsmith and Ron Perelman. His services were sometimes retained by companies as a defense against those corporate raiders. A poor boy from Brooklyn, Flom entered Harvard Law School without having earned an undergraduate degree.

Political economyIn Ivory Coast the internationally recognized winner of November's disputed presidential election extended a ban he had imposed on cocoa exports from his country, in an effort to make the incumbent stand aside. Cocoa stocks are piling up in ports, increasing the chance of the beans decaying.

An online campaign urged people in Beijing and a dozen other cities in China to heed the example of the "jasmine revolution" sweeping the Arab world and to converge in public places to call for political and economic rights. Very few civilians turned up, but police were out in droves, and censors banned the word "jasmine" from China's microblogs. Activists reported that a number of their leaders had been arrested ahead of the protests.

Nearly 2.7 million civil servants set out around India to conduct the world's second-largest census. For the first time the census takers will ask which of three sexes -- male, female or "other" -- the subject belongs to, and record how many Indians have electricity, toilets and permanent dwellings. Caste will also be tallied, in a separate survey.

Shanghai announced a one-dog policy, based along the lines of China's one-child law. Owners of the city's many unlicensed pooches insisted that local authorities were hounding them.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on Sunday that it would be “economic suicide” and a “terrible mistake” for Iran to disrupt movement through the strait.

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