Company Briefs : UBS, Nomura, UniCredit

UBS Group, Nomura Holdings and UniCredit were fined a total of US$452 million (S$601 million) by the European Union for colluding on euro government bond trading during the region's sovereign debt crisis.

UBS was fined €172 million (S$279 million) and Nomura will have to pay €129.6 million for a traders' cartel that swopped commercially sensitive information from 2007 to 2011 when euro zone bond yields soared. UniCredit was fined €69 million.

The EU has spent more than a decade probing how bank traders swopped information in chatrooms, leading to billions of euros in fines.

BLOOMBERG

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JD Logistics

JD Logistics has indicated it will price its shares at HK$40.36, towards the lower end of its flagged range, to raise US$3.16 billion (S$4.21 billion) in a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO), two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

JD Logistics, spun off from e-commerce major JD.com, did not immediately comment. It had set a price range of HK$39.36 to HK$43.36 per share, which would have raised US$3.4 billion at the top end. Pricing of the deal has been closely watched as a barometer of whether Hong Kong's IPO market has been impacted by the recent global volatility.

REUTERS

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Snapchat

Snapchat, the social network popular with young smartphone users, said on Thursday it has 500 million monthly active users amid surging growth in many parts of the world.

The platform, which has expanded its offerings beyond its original disappearing messages, had not previously announced a figure for monthly active users, but had said last month it had 280 million daily active users.

Nearly one of every two smartphone users in the United States is on the network, said chief executive Evan Spiegel.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE