World

Referring to the battle of Southeast Asia's e-commerce market between Grab, Sea and Goto, Jungle Ventures said: "I think they are still in the opening act of this movie." Southeast Asia's e-commerce ecosystem is still at a "very, very nascent stage" and many more business models and companies will be formed in the region, said the founding partner of a venture capital firm. "We're talking about single-digit digital penetration, as compared to the overall commerce penetration," Amit Anand of Jungle Ventures, a Southeast Asian company, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Thursday. When asked about the competition between the likes of Grab, Sea and Goto for the heart of the region's e-commerce market, he said: "I think they're still in the opening act of this movie." "By no means I think the s...

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WASHINGTON/HONG KONG : "Significant issues remain" in reaching a deal with China over a long-running dispute around auditing compliance of China-based companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) official said on Tuesday. The SEC's international affairs chief, YJ Fischer, told an audience that the agency's accounting body, the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), would need to complete China audit inspections by Nov. 22 to meet a U.S. deadline that will require noncompliant Chinese companies to delist by early 2023. Fischer added that Chinese authorities should consider delisting from U.S. exchanges a "subset of issuers" that it deems "too sensitive to comply" with U.S. rules. "While there has certainly been progress in the...

U.S. President Joe Biden formally introduced the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, this week during his first Asia tour, revealing Washington's long-awaited Asia-Pacific economic strategy. It comes five years after the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal signed by 12 countries in Asia-Pacific, North America and South America. With the U.S. withdrawal, the remaining countries went on to launch the CPTPP, or Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership — one of the world's biggest multilateral trade deals, and one that China requested to join. Since then, the U.S. has been largely absent in the region, made worse by its trade war with China. But the IPEF has broken the ice. Still, analysts and observers say the deal lacks "teeth" and...

SINGAPORE: Even before it had the usual cashless payment options, homeware e-retailer &glazed was already allowing customers to pay for their purchases using cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin were among those accepted at its checkout page since the start of the year, before other familiar options such as PayNow were added. Co-founder Lionel Lim made the less-typical decision, partly due to his interest in the burgeoning space. He invests in cryptocurrencies, and also holds a full-time job at a crypto exchange based in Singapore. Besides, having as many payment methods as possible would be the way to go for an online store, he said. “We want to make it as seamless as possible – to the extent that whatever you want to pay with, we got it,” he told CNA. So far, it seems very...

HONG KONG: The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) stepped into currency markets for the first time in 18 months, twice buying Hong Kong dollars to stop the local currency weakening and breaking its peg to the US dollar. The de facto central bank bought HK$1.586 billion (US$202 million) from the market in UStrading on Wednesday and a further HK$4.082 billion in Hong Kong trading on Thursday. The Hong Kong dollar is pegged to a tight band of between 7.75 and 7.85 versus the US dollar. It has been softening as US interest rates rise while a surfeit of cash in the local banking system keeps Hong Kong rates pinned down. One-month US dollar Libor, a benchmark lending rate, is around 0.8 per cent - its highest since April 2020 - while the Hong Kong equivalent, one-month Hibor, is under 0.2 pe...

NEW YORK :Oil prices rebounded from two days of losses in a volatile session on Thursday, bolstered by weakness in the dollar and expectations that China could ease some lockdown restrictions that could boost demand. Crude benchmarks continued their spate of wild swings, with both Brent and U.S. crude rising by nearly $5 a barrel in the span of a few hours, recovering from losses earlier in the week. "The market has been extremely volatile," said Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates in Houston. "The market is reacting to all sorts of different headlines hour to hour, and the movement in oil markets on a day-by-day basis getting even more exaggerated." Brent crude futures for July settled at $112.04, a gain of $2.93 a barrel, or 2.7 per cent. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI)...

BEIJING/HONG KONG :China's property sales in April fell at their fastest pace in around 16 years as COVID-19 lockdowns further cooled demand despite more policy easing steps aimed at reviving a key pillar of the world's second-largest economy. Property sales by value in April slumped 46.6 per cent from a year earlier, the biggest drop since August 2006, and sharply widening from the 26.17 per cent fall in March, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) released on Monday. Property sales in January-April by value fell 29.5 per cent year-on-year, compared with a 22.7 per cent decline in the first three months. A further cut in mortgage loan interest rates for some home buyers announced by Chinese authorities on Sunday did little to convi...

KUALA LUMPUR: United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has filed a lawsuit against Dr Mahathir Mohamad, saying that the former prime minister’s remarks about him are defamatory and malicious. Malaysian media reported that the suit is in regard to Dr Mahathir’s comments that Ahmad Zahid had sought his help to get his corruption charges dropped. The UMNO leader filed his statement of claim on Apr 20 at the Kuala Lumpur High Court, seeking an injunction to stop Dr Mahathir from repeating his remarks. The Star reported that the suit was scheduled for case management before High Court deputy registrar Nor Afidah Idris on Wednesday (Apr 27). Citing the court document, the Star said that Dr Mahathir uttered the alleged defamatory statements at an event by Parti ...

Xander Miller, 18, will graduate from Hastings High School in Hastings, Minnesota, this June, and he has big plans for his future. Rather than attend Minnesota State or get a liberal arts degree like his older brother, Miller is enrolled in Dakota County Technical College with a guaranteed job through Waste Management's apprentice program. "I did have plans to go to a four-year school," he said. However, "it didn't seem valuable enough to me to offset the cost." Miller will instead start as a part-time technician and then transition into a full-time employee complete with tools and a tuition reimbursement. Xander Miller, right, with his brother Andrew and mother Lisa. Source: Xander Miller More than two years into the pandemic, nearly three-quarters, or 73%, of high schoolers think a dir...