By Clement Tan HONG KONG (Reuters) - Improving first-quarter results from some of China's biggest steel and cement firms suggest that Beijing's economic recovery plan may be starting to filter through into corporate profits. That would bring a leavening touch to data released this week indicating that China's factories are expanding less quickly than expected, more evidence that the pace of recovery is slowing despite a boom in credit supply. Earnings growth for China-listed companies averaged 10. ...

By Anshuman Daga and Eveline Danubrata SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A stroke of bad luck. That's what casino operator Genting Singapore PLC blamed for reporting a sharply lower-than-expected quarterly profit, while also flagging a cautious outlook due to muted Chinese economic growth. Genting Singapore's Resorts World Sentosa, one of two casinos in the island state that are the envy of the global industry since opening three years ago, said that its 35 percent fall in core earnings simply came down to so-called "premium" gamblers getting lucky. ...

LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to report its first quarterly profit in 18 months on Friday, the fruit of efforts to focus on bread and butter lending and shed the high risk assets that led to its public bailout in 2008. The outlook for European banks as a whole remains shaky, with France's biggest bank BNP Paribas expected to post a slump in earnings in its own results on Friday. RBS is seen showing a pretax profit of 800 million pounds ($1. ...

By Ann Saphir (Reuters) - CBOE Holdings Inc , which runs the oldest U.S. stock-options trading venue, said on Friday that quarterly earnings rose on a trading surge of its lucrative contracts for two of the most closely watched stock indexes. Shares rose 4.3 percent to $39.10 on the Nasdaq. But in a potential setback to the company's future growth, CBOE Chief Executive William Brodsky indefinitely deferred plans to extend trading hours for one of the contracts - futures on the CBOE Volatility Index . ...

(Reuters) - Washington Post Co reported an 85 percent drop in first-quarter net income on Friday on weakness in its education and newspaper businesses. Stronger results from the television and cable operations, however, helped the company squeeze out a 0.4 percent rise in total revenue to $959.1 million. The first-quarter earnings indicated that its namesake newspaper can't shake the problems clinging to the sector, mainly a drain in advertising revenue and the loss of readers, who are reading news elsewhere. Total revenue at the newspaper division dropped 4 percent to $127. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Berkshire Hathaway chairman and chief executive Warren Buffett said that he would not sell shares of IBM Corp., even as the company missed earnings expectations last month. "I won't be a seller of IBM," Buffett told cable television network CNBC ahead of Berkshire's annual shareholder meeting, which will begin May 4 in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett also said he did not buy more shares of IBM following the company's disappointing earnings results, which led to an 8 percent drop in the company's shares a day later. ...