Europe

Virgin Money has created 200 jobs in Edinburgh as part of its strategy to firm up its foothold in the UK banking sector.

The financial arm of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group is giving a much-needed boost to the Scottish capital, which has suffered from large-scale job cuts.

Virgin Money said the new jobs would bring its total workforce to 500.

The group is now looking for city-centre premises for a new operations office, with staff recruitment expected to begin early next year, ahead of the spring launch date set for Virgin Bank.

UK mobile phone giant Vodafone, the world's biggest mobile operator by revenue, has announced the sale of its 3.2 per cent stake in China Mobile for around £4.3 billion.

The sale is the first of what is expected to be several sales of minority holdings as part of Newbury-based Vodafone’s strategy to focus on core markets as it tries to improve its share price.

The buyers of the stake, of which it is thought there may be several, have not been identified.

Royal Dutch Shell is in exclusive talks with the Finnish fuel distributor St1 to sell the oil major's Swedish refinery, it has been announced.

The Gothenburg refinery has simple-to-medium complexity, allowing it to process low-sulphur light crude from the North Sea; but not high-sulphur crude.

With a processing capacity of about 78,000 barrels of crude oil per day, the refinery supplies the domestic market with specialist fuels, such as diesel that does not freeze in the cold Scandinavian climate.

UK oil giant BP has revived the sale of its Alaskan assets after failing to sell them to US oil and gas company Apache in July, according to a report in the Financial Times.

Houston-based Apache is said to be still in the running to purchase the assets, while US-based Occidental Petroleum is also seen as a potential bidder.

The FT said it is not yet known whether BP is planning to sell its entire 26 per cent stake in the giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield, which includes the operating rights.

Retailers from Europe and Asia are in an auction battle for the south-east Asian assets of the French supermarket chain Carrefour.

The French company put the stores on the market after a strategic decision to withdraw from Asian countries where it stood no chance of becoming market leader.

The portfolio consists of 40 supermarkets in Thailand, 19 in Malaysia and two in Singapore; and is expected to fetch around €780 million.

Africa-focused oil company Afren has announced strong interim results on the back of higher oil prices, and looks set to double production this year.

The London-based company recorded pre-tax profits for the six months to 30 June of $75.4 million (approximately €59.2 million).

UK oil and gas explorer EnCore Oil has announced a new North Sea oil find at its Cladhan field.

Cladhan is located 225 miles north-east of Aberdeen, in 536 feet water depth. It is thought that the field may hold reserves of between 100 million and 200 million barrels.

The Cladhan announcement follows the discovery of the 300 million barrel Catcher field, which was identified in June and in which EnCore also has a stake.

EnCore, which started drilling at the Cladhan site in August, will now drill horizontally to determine the size of the field.

Denman Instrumentation Ltd, based in Hull, England, has secured a major contract with French power engineering company Alstom on a €1 billion joint repowering and new construction project in the southeast of the Netherlands.

The complex project involves the integration of three new gas turbines into a former steam power plant near Maastricht to form a 1,280 MW combined cycle power plant. The project features the most advanced technology available for a power plant and will reduce CO2 emissions by 40 per cent.

Diageo, the world's biggest drinks maker, has reported pre-tax profits of £2.24 billion in the year to the end of June—an increase of 12 per cent.

Overall sales at the firm, whose brands include Smirnoff, Guinness and Johnnie Walker, grew by five per cent to £9.9 billion.

Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy has said it may have found oil in the untapped waters of western Greenland.

Cairn, which is the only firm so far to have been allowed to drill for oil off Greenland, said that it has found gas in thin sands in the Baffin Bay basin, which could be a sign of oil. The area lies around 400 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.

The company said it is still too early to gauge the significance of the find, as the well has not yet been drilled to its total depth.