World

HONG KONG: TerraUSD, one of the world's largest stablecoins, lost a third of its value on Tuesday, spooking cryptocurrency investors and partly contributing to bitcoin's tumble below US$30,000 for the first time in 10 months. Stablecoins are digital tokens pegged to the value of traditional assets, such as the US dollar. They are popular as safe havens in times of turmoil in crypto markets and are a common medium of exchange, often used by traders to move funds around and speculate on other cryptocurrencies. TerraUSD, also known as 'UST', is a so-called algorithmic stablecoin, one of the largest by market capitalisation. On Tuesday it broke its 1:1 peg to the dollar and fell as low as 67 cents, according to price site CoinGecko. The token shot to prominence earlier this year when non-pr...

DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates' de facto leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan was elected president of the Gulf Arab state by a federal supreme council on Saturday (May 14), solidifying his rule over the OPEC oil producer and key regional player. He becomes president at a time when the UAE's long-standing ties with the United States have been strained over perceived U.S. disengagement from its Gulf allies' security concerns and as Western countries seek support from the region to help isolate Russia over the Ukraine conflict. The council, which groups the rulers of the seven emirates of the UAE federation, elected Sheikh Mohammed, known as MbZ, a day after the death of his half-brother, President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, who was also ruler of Abu Dhabi. "We congratulate him and ...

Hong Kong's incoming chief executive John Lee has focused on security throughout his career and is largely "untested" in other areas, according to the CEO of a consultancy. "He's a blank sheet of paper for most people in the community. That gives him flexibility, I think," said David Dodwell of Strategic Access. "But it means that how he's going to manage is perhaps more uncertain … than any leadership we've had in the past 25 years," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Monday. Lee, a Beijing loyalist and the only candidate for Hong Kong's top post, won the vast majority of votes in Sunday's election. "His lifetime has been devoted to security issues, first in the police force and then as security secretary here in Hong Kong. He's by and large untested and unknown, for that matter, in any ...

A US$471 million venture capital fund to be established by a group of Chinese military and business institutions aims to circumvent US sanctions to secure high-end military technology, according to a recent Taiwanese media report. Yang I-Kwei, a researcher affiliated with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, said in an April 15 Taipei Times article that China aims to develop its own domestic military supply chain through the fund, significantly at a time when Beijing has stepped up its threats against Taiwan. Yang’s comments came after Guangzhou Haige Communications Group Corporation, which provides communications, simulators, military pilot training systems, and navigation equipment to the Chinese military, announced this month that it will team up with China Poly Group, China’s large...

Canned goods are displayed at a Safeway store on April 11, 2022 in San Anselmo, California. A measure that the Federal Reserve focuses on to gauge inflation rose in March, likely cementing the central bank's intention to hike interest rates by half a percentage in May. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which measures costs that consumers pay across a wide swath of items and accounts for how behavior changes in response to market dynamics, increased 5.2% from a year ago, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. However, that was slightly below the 5.3% reading in February, which was the highest since April 1983. March's figure was less than the 5.3% Dow Jones estimate. On a month-over-month basis, core prices rose 0.3%, in line with the estimate, providing som...

TOKYO: Financial leaders from Japan, China and South Korea on Thursday (May 12) warned of risks to Asia's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and committed themselves to backing market stability and sound fiscal policy. Heightened risks included unexpectedly early rises in interest rates "in some advanced nations", accelerating inflation, and disruption from the war in Ukraine, finance ministers and central bank governors of the three countries said in a joint statement. The statement followed an annual meeting, held online, before the leaders were due to meet virtually with their counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, also on Thursday. The Japanese, Chinese and South Korean officials affirmed their commitment to using support measures, which they did not...

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Saudi Arabia on Thursday (Apr 28) in the first high-level visit in years which he hopes will herald a new era of relations after intense efforts to repair strained ties. Erdogan met with King Salman in an official ceremony in the al-Salam palace in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, the Turkish presidency said in a statement. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom's de facto ruler, attended the ceremony before having a one-on-one meeting with Erdogan, Ankara's communication office said on Twitter. Erdogan's visit, which his office said was at the invitation of the Saudi king, marks the culmination of a months-long drive to mend ties that included dropping a trial over the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018....

China should consider the West's strong response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in its own calculations on Taiwan, a former Singaporean diplomat told CNBC on Friday. "I hope, the major powers in our region, China in particular, have taken note of the very unified and strong Western response and [China] will take that into its calculations vis-a-vis Taiwan, the South China Sea and the Senkaku Islands," Bilahari Kausikan, a former permanent secretary at the Singapore foreign ministry, told CNBC's Street Signs Asia. China claims self-ruled Taiwan as part of its territory, even though the island has been governed independently of China since 1949. Beijing also has a number of territorial disputes with its neighbors in the South China Sea, including with Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, the Phi...

TOKYO : When Japan's biggest banks helped finance a $34 billion deal last year for medical supply maker Medline, one of the largest leveraged buyouts since the financial crisis, the famously cautious lenders signalled their ambitions in riskier, and more lucrative, low-grade U.S. debt. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, eagerly hunting yield abroad after years of zero rates at home, have beefed up U.S. operations and are now targeting business there lending to lower-rated borrowers and underwriting junk bonds. But their timing - when interest rates are rising and the high-yield debt market is slowing - means they will face increasing risks and dwindling opportunities, testing their staying power. "We'll need to closely...

(Fixes spelling of military in paragraph 8) PARIS :India banned wheat exports on Saturday as a heatwave curtailed output and domestic prices soared, a blow to global buyers banking on the world's second-biggest wheat producer after Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine hit Black Sea supplies. The war in Ukraine has caused grain and sunflower oil exports from the Black Sea region to plunge, adding to the strain of adverse weather in key producing countries threatening global production. With food prices rocketing, a growing list of key producing countries are limiting exports. Here are some examples of the most recent or most significant food staple export bans. INDIA - MAY 2022 - WHEAT India banned wheat exports in a bid to lower local prices, days after saying it was targeting record ...