Marsh has agreed to acquire Honan Insurance Group Pty Ltd. as the US insurance broker giant seeks to expand its presence in Australia and New Zealand. The Marsh & McLennan Cos Inc. unit has signed a deal to buy out Melbourne-based Honan, including an 80% stake held by private equity firm TA Associates, according to a statement, which confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report. The deal is expected to be completed later this year, subject to regulatory approval. Marsh did not disclose the...

It’s been nearly a year since the billionaire known as Madam Thao had four Airbus A321s grounded on the tarmac in Vietnam. And all this time, the airliners have sat, stranded, in one of the odder international incidents since Vietnam went from communism to a form of capitalism. The story stretches from the People’s Court of Hanoi to the elegant Mayfair area of London, and from there up to spired Oxford, where Madam Thao – formally, Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao — planned to have her name etched into...

National Australia Bank Ltd.’s first-half profit fell short of analyst estimates as a boost to margins from higher interest rates was offset by caution on the economic trajectory. The stock opened 6% lower. Cash earnings rose 17% to A$4.07 billion ($2.72 billion) in the six months ended March 31 from a year earlier, the Melbourne-based firm said in a statement Thursday. That’s its best half-year profit on record, though it missed the A$4.18 billion estimate in a Bloomberg survey of...

Brandon Krieg’s startup was barely two years old when he was invited to a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. innovators conference in Santa Barbara, California. Brandon Watkins, the bank’s head of digital finance investment banking, had heard about Krieg’s investing app, Stash, from an early-stage venture capital investor and wanted to get to know the company better. Three years on, when Krieg and Stash co-founder Ed Robinson decided for the first time to hire an adviser to help them raise new funding,...