BEIJING China’s real estate investment growth continued to slow in the first seven months of 2015 due to weak new construction, but property sales and housing investment improved, indicating a mixed recovery in the struggling property market. Property investme... More »
TOKYO Seventy years after Japan’s defeat in World War Two, the conflict’s legacy haunts East Asia and reconciliation remains elusive. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may hope to lay the ghosts to rest with a statement on Friday marking the 70th anniversary of the wa... More »
BEIJING “Tragedy” – that was Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N) founder Jack Ma’s prediction for the fate of rival JD.com Inc (JD.O) in comments published earlier this year. On Monday, Alibaba signaled it is no longer writing off its smaller competitor, making... More »
BEIJING Government spending in China jumped by nearly a quarter in July to a three-month high as authorities accelerated spending on state projects and hiked wages of civil servants as planned, data showed on Wednesday. Beijing hopes faster government spending... More »
WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday said China’s devaluation of the yuan would be “devastating” for the United States. “They’re just destroying us,” the billionaire businessman, a long-time critic of China’s currency policy, sa... More »
NEW YORK A U.S. criminal investigation into allegations that China’s ZTE Corp for sold banned U.S. computer products to Iran has spilled into a civil dispute with a New York-based patent licensing firm, as ZTE has refused to make one of its top executives avai... More »
USA Track & Field (USATF) on Tuesday released a detailed breakdown of how it spends its money in response to an allegation made by runner Nick Symmonds that the body spends a tiny proportion of its income on athlete support. Symmonds, who won the 800 meters at... More »
NEW YORK/BOSTON The slowdown in the Chinese economy, which prompted the Chinese government to devalue the yuan currency on Tuesday, has already hammered the shares of U.S. industrial companies. Yet some contrarian U.S. fund managers say there is still room to ... More »
China’s massive foreign currency reserves are dwindling at a more than half-trillion-dollar annual pace, a trend which may tighten global credit conditions. China’s central bank said its reserves fell by $43 billion in July to $3.65 trillion, in the first ever... More »
LONDON/SYDNEY Economic headwinds facing Chinese manufacturers intensified last month, with conditions deteriorating to their weakest level in two years, while euro zone factories largely shrugged off Greece’s brush with bankruptcy. July was a fraught month for... More »
FRANKFURT/HELSINKI German carmakers BMW (BMWG.DE), Audi (VOWG_p.DE) and Mercedes (DAIGn.DE), will pay around 2.5 billion euros ($2.75 billion) to buy Nokia’s maps business, a transformational deal that will help them to develop self-driving cars. Daimler BMW a... More »
KUALA LUMPUR The head of world athletics vigorously defended the IAAF’s anti-doping record on Monday, as global sporting bodies called for a thorough probe of the latest allegations to plunge international sport into crisis. Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper an... More »
HONG KONG HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L) beat expectations with a 10 percent rise in first-half profit on Monday, driven by a strong performance in Hong Kong, and said it had agreed the sale of its unprofitable Brazilian unit. It said it had agreed to sell Banco Brade... More »
KUALA LUMPUR The head of world athletics said on Monday that any suggestion his organization had been negligent in drug testing of athletes was “laughable”. “There are allegations made, no evidence,” IAAF president Lamine Diack told Reuters in the Malaysian ca... More »
SYDNEY Headwinds for the world’s second-biggest economy intensified at the start of the third quarter, with manufacturing conditions in China deteriorating to their worst in two years in July and triggering fresh slides in global commodity prices. Similar busi... More »
LONDON The Chinese slowdown is forcing many Western companies to take a hard look at their businesses there, leading many to reduce investments, costs and product lines and to tackle increasing bad debts. Double digit growth rates during the first decade of th... More »
SAO PAULO HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA.L) agreed to sell its Brazilian unit to Banco Bradesco SA (BBDC4.SA) for $5.2 billion, retreating from the second-largest emerging market economy after years of disappointing performance. Europe’s No. 1 bank said in a statemen... More »
HONG KONG/TOKYO An index of Asian shares outside Japan fell close to this year’s lows on Monday thanks to a deepening selloff in commodities and fresh concerns over slowing growth in China, while the dollar held its ground against a basket of currencies. In li... More »
TAIPEI Protests in Taiwan over textbook revisions which students say aim to brainwash them into accepting a “one China” view of history underscore the island’s growing sense of independence from its vast neighbor and geopolitical foe. Hundreds of youths storme... More »
NEW YORK Investors worldwide pulled $1.2 billion out of precious metals funds in the week ended July 29 on expectations for higher U.S. interest rates and weakness in Chinese shares, data from a Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research report showed on Fr... More »
LONDON U.S. equities’ share in global portfolios fell to the lowest in at least five years and U.S. bond allocations were also cut as nervous investors started readying themselves for the first Federal Reserve rate rise in almost a decade. But while U.S. asset... More »
NEW YORK Global equity markets dropped on Friday and copper fell to a six-year low as weaker-than-expected data from China and the euro zone exacerbated concerns over global economic growth. Brent and U.S. crude oil futures settled at their lowest since March ... More »
LONDON/NEW YORK The global economy started the second half of the year on shaky ground with China’s factory sector activity contracting in July at the fastest pace in 15 months and euro zone manufacturing weaker than expected, although U.S. activity picked up.... More »
SHANGHAI Officials from the world’s largest emerging nations launched the New Development Bank (NDB) on Tuesday, the second of two new policy banks heavily backed by Beijing that are being pitched as alternatives to existing institutions such as the World Bank... More »
LONDON Gold was on the brink of five year lows on Tuesday, with more losses expected in the coming months following Monday’s “bear raid” when sellers dumped an estimated 33 tonnes in just two minutes. The sudden bout of selling in Shanghai and New York occurre... More »
BANGKOK/HONG KONG U.S. fund giant BlackRock Inc (BLK.N) has won a special new licence that will allow it to raise funds in China directly for the first time, a senior executive told Reuters, paving the way for the world’s largest money manager to expand in the... More »
VIENNA A senior Iranian negotiator voiced hope on Monday that a nuclear deal with six major powers would be completed but cautioned that there was work to be done and he could not promise the talks would finish by Tuesday night, Iranian media reported. “I cann... More »
BEIJING China’s export sales unexpectedly rose for the first time in four months in June and imports fell again but posted their best performance this year, causing some optimism tepid trade flows are picking up. Yet hopes were offset by a realization that Chi... More »
TAIPEI Companies such as electric motor scooter firm Gogoro could hold the key to Taiwan’s economic growth. In just three years, the start-up, which counts Japan’s Panasonic Corp as a strategic partner and Cher Wang, the founder of local smartphone maker HTC C... More »
WASHINGTON Giant pandas eat vegetables even though their bodies are better equipped to eat meat. So how do these black-and-white bears from the remote, misty mountains of central China survive on a diet almost exclusively of a low-nutrient food like bamboo? Sc... More »
SHANGHAI Chinese stocks fell on Tuesday, taking little comfort from a slew of support measures unleashed by Beijing in recent days, and unnerved by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s failure to mention the market chaos in a statement on the economy. Before the marke... More »
TOKYO Most Asian stocks drooped on Tuesday as Chinese equity markets went into a fresh tailspin, fraying investor nerves already strained by uncertainty hanging over the future of Greece and the European currency union. Chinese shares fell more than 5 percent ... More »
SHANGHAI Chinese investors sold off shares on Tuesday morning after Premier Li Keqiang was quoted on a government website saying that China has the ability to deal with economic risks but did not specifically mention the country’s embattled stock market. Inves... More »
LONDON Governments around the world should increase taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products to save lives and generate funds for stronger health services, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. In a report entitled “The Global Tobacco Epid... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Tumbling markets and economic uncertainty in China pose a risk to major chipmakers such as Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) that derive a big portion of their sales from the world’s second-largest economy. Consumer electronics giant Apple Inc (AAPL.O) could... More »
WASHINGTON Loss of U.S. Export-Import Bank financing would put Boeing Co (BA.N) at a “huge competitive disadvantage” since its rivals still have access to such financing support, the head of the company’s commercial aircraft division told reporters on Monday. ... More »
VIENNA A dispute over U.N. sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile program and a broader arms embargo were among issues holding up a nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers on Monday, the day before their latest self-imposed deadline. “The Iranians want... More »
HONG KONG Asian shares held near five-month lows on Tuesday after Chinese stocks took another leg down while safe-haven assets received a boost as investors nervously awaited further developments in the deepening euro zone crisis. China’s stocks .SSEC tumbled ... More »
DUBAI Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, departed Tehran for Vienna with nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Hossein Fereydoon, a brother and close aide to President Hassan Rouhani, for nuclear talks, state news agency IRNA reported on Tuesday. Zari... More »
BEIJING China’s trade deficit in services widened to $18.3 billion in May, as Chinese tourists continued to spend more abroad than foreigners visiting the country, the foreign exchange regulator said on Tuesday. The deficit was led by a $16.2 billion gap in sp... More »
WASHINGTON More than half a billion years ago, a peculiar little creature with rows of spikes on its back and delicate, feather-like front limbs to strain bits of food from the water thrived in the primordial seas of what is now China. Scientists on Monday ann... More »
CHICAGO Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) will start a business loan program for small sellers in the United Kingdom on Tuesday and is looking to launch it this year in seven more countries including China. Until now, the e-retailer has offered the service only in the U... More »
TOKYO U.S. stock futures edged up and the euro sagged in early Asian trading on Tuesday as Greece lurched toward defaulting on a debt payment due later in the session, raising the likelihood of the cash-strapped nation’s exit from the euro zone. Greece will no... More »
