Market

SHANGHAI: Low standards of hygiene in China's wholesale food markets and vulnerabilities in its food supply chain need to be urgently addressed after a new COVID-19 outbreak in Beijing, a leading body of the ruling Communist Party said. The resurgence of COVID-19 in the country's capital over the past week, infecting more than 100 people and raising fears of wider contagion, has been linked to the city's massive Xinfadi food centre. The Communist Party's top disciplinary body said the outbreak underlined the urgent need to improve sanitation standards and minimise health risks at markets. "The epidemic is a mirror that not only reflects the dirty and messy aspects of wholesale markets but also their low-level management conditions," the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (...

ZURICH: Business conditions are improving after a tough start to the year, Credit Suisse Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein said in a presentation released on Wednesday (Jun 10). "Those early indications that we have seen now in the last couple of weeks have been actually quite promising and going in the right direction. We clearly had a lot of stress in the system in the second half of March but things really calmed down in April and they continue to be quite robust in May and June," he said in an audiocast for a Goldman Sachs conference. "So far, so good. Clearly we expect very bad economic data for Europe and the US for Q2 but overall actually if I speak to my colleagues on the corporate banking side in Switzerland, to my colleagues in investment banking, we actually see high engage...

A view of the Marathon Petroleum Corp's Los Angeles Refinery in Carson, California, April 25, 2020 after the price for crude plunged into negative territory for the first time in history on April 20. Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images Oil prices pared gains on Monday, despite the weekend announcement by OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+, that historic production cuts of 9.6 million barrels per day across the group would continue through July as the coronavirus pandemic continues to weigh on demand. The move spurred hopeful talk of a recovery for oil prices, which are down about 30% year-to-date after a 56% recovery for international benchmark Brent crude in the month of May. But data from refineries across several regions shows weak margins, or "crack spreads" — the difference between the ...

Opposing forces hit stocks on Thursday. The major averages closed sharply higher after a late-day surge, capping off a mixed trading session that grappled with rising coronavirus case counts in reopened states such as Texas, which said it would pause its efforts to try to stem the spread. U.S. stocks initially rose after banking regulators said they would ease some restrictions put in place after the 2007-2009 financial crisis, sparking an upward move in bank stocks that continued in the afternoon bounce. Here's what five market watchers had to say about Thursday's action: Deregulation danger Former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chair Sheila Bair said the bank regulators' moves were "ill-advised": "I think they're significantly in the direction of deregulation. That's kind of bee...