Sears revenue drops, business leaders address gender pay gap

In its annual report filed Tuesday, Sears announced that there’s "substantial doubt" that it can stay in business. The company’s annual revenues slipped almost 40 percent since 2013 to US$22 billion ($AU28 billion) in 2016. Its losses reportedly rose to US$607 million ($AU791 million) in the most recent quarter. Meanwhile, recent poll shows that businesses fail to handle the gender pay gap.

Australia

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's arrives to Australia for trade discussions. His country declared that it wants to expand e-commerce trade for Australian and Chinese companies that sell products online. Large Australian companies rocketed, with Blackmores now up by 13.3 percent, Bellamy's up 14.66 percent and a2 Milk by 4.88 percent.

US

In the US, Lennar (LEN), a Miami-based company, said US President Donald Trump’s presidency resulted to a surge in construction activity. The second-largest homebuilder in the country reported a higher income that is expected for the fiscal first quarter.

Canada

Health Canada seized 10 products from EPCA Shipping Inc, a company that sells health products online. In a press release, the agency said the confiscated products are labelled to contain various prescription drugs that could pose a serious health risk.

Europe

A poll of 250 senior decision-makers in UK companies shows that 29 percent do not consider pay gap as a big deal in businesses as they instead see bad publicity as the biggest problem. The gap between full-time male and female workers in the country is currently at 13.9 percent based on a data from Fawcett Society. Geoff Pearce, Managing Consultant at NGA Human Resources, told CNBC via email that organisations must develop a culture of equality at work in order to end the gap.

Africa

Mary Flowers, the organiser of African Global Economic and Development Summit, declared that all the African citizens who requested visas for the African trade summit in California were rejected. The three-day conference at the University of Southern California (USC) seeks to bring delegations from across Africa for a meeting with business leaders in the US to advance partnerships. “I don’t know if it’s Trump or if it’s the fact that the embassies that have been discriminating for a long time see this as an opportunity, because of talk of the travel ban, to blatantly reject everyone,” the Guardian quotes Flowers.

Asia Pacific

The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) launches its Asia-Pacific hub in Malaysia. The first outside its Madrid headquarters in Spain will be fully operational before the year ends.