Business

Philip Morris International, the world's largest international tobacco company, could eventually stop selling cigarettes, its chief executive told the BBC on Wednesday, as it launched its alternative product IQOS in the UK market. The company's IQOS smokeless cigarette which is already on sale in over a dozen markets including Japan, Switzerland and Italy, heats tobacco enough to produce a vapor without burning it. The company believes that makes it much less harmful than cigarettes. "I believe there will come a moment in time where I would say we have sufficient adoption of these alternative products… to start envisaging, together with governments, a phase-out period for cigarettes," Andre Calantzopoulos said on BBC Radio 4. (Reuters)

Gazprom set a new record of daily natural gas deliveries to non-CIS countries, amounting to 608.6 million cubic meters on November 28, the company said on Tuesday. This is the ninth record figure reached this fall, TASS reported. The previous peak of 601.2 million cubic meters daily was reached on November 25, Gazprom said. The Russian gas holding supplied 159.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas to non-CIS countries from January 1 to November 27.

Germany’s finance minister is praising conservative French presidential candidate Francois Fillon’s economic program as strong and says he hopes that far-right leader Marine Le Pen never becomes president in France. Wolfgang Schaeuble, a leading conservative and a key architect of Europe’s response to its recent debt troubles, said Tuesday that Fillon’s program “has strong plausibility [on] how France could better display its true strengths.” (AP)

Britain began consultations on encouraging better corporate behavior and curbing excessive executive pay on Tuesday, part of Prime Minister Theresa May’s campaign to help those who voted for Brexit in protest at “out of touch” elites. Taking aim at high executive pay, company boards and the behavior of large privately-held businesses, her government will ask for opinions on questions such as: Should a new pay ratio reporting requirement be introduced? Among dozens of proposals, May’s plans to have workers represented on boards have been watered down, with business minister Greg Clark saying the government would not “overturn” Britain’s successful system of having unitary boards. (Reuters)

The US economy grew faster than initially thought in the third quarter, notching its best performance in two years, buoyed by strong consumer spending and a surge in soybean exports. GDP increased at a 3.2 percent annual rate instead of the previously reported 2.9 percent pace, the Commerce Department said in its second GDP estimate on Tuesday. Growth was the strongest since the third quarter of 2014 and followed the second quarter's anemic 1.4 percent pace. Growth was also lifted by upward revisions to business investment in structures and home building, underscoring the economy’s solid fundamentals that further bolster the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month. (Reuters)

Actions taken by the Bank of England have had a positive impact in stimulating Britain’s economy since the June 23 vote to leave the EU, finance minister Philip Hammond said on Tuesday. The BoE responded to the Brexit vote by cutting interest rates to record low of 0.25 percent in August and restarted its massive bond-buying program for the first time since 2012. “We have got the key elements in place both monetary and fiscal for the circumstances we face, which is the potential for a more difficult period ahead,” Hammond told parliament. (Reuters)