JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's FirstRand Ltd on Thursday posted a 10% rise in first-half earnings, helped by stronger overall credit performance. Its normalised earnings rose to 20.9 billion rand ($1.14 billion) in the six months ending Dec. 31, from 19.1 billion rand a year earlier, the bank said. FirstRand, which also operates across certain markets in sub-Saharan Africa and...

LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) - Reckitt, maker of Dettol cleaning products and Strepsils throat lozenges, missed fourth-quarter sales expectations with a 4.6% rise in like-for-like net sales, it said on Thursday. The company, for which analysts had forecast growth of 5.3% for the quarter, said it expects full-year like-for-like net sales growth of 2-4%. ...

TOKYO (Reuters) -Seven & i Holdings, the Japanese operator of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, announced a change of CEO and plans to restructure its business in the face of a $47 billion foreign takeover bid. Lead outside director Stephen Dacus will succeed Ryuichi Isaka as chief executive, the company said, putting a foreign executive in charge of Seven & i...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica has hired Rothschild to help it sell its unit in Peru that filed for bankruptcy protection last month, El Confidencial news outlet reported on Thursday. Last month, Telefonica sold its unit in Argentina for $1.245 billion as part of a strategy - under new management led by Marc Murtra - to gradually reduce...