World

MOMBASA, Kenya: China said on Thursday (Jan 6) it would appoint a special envoy to foster peace in the turbulent Horn of Africa and wanted to shift focus on the continent to trade over infrastructure. Foreign Minister Wang Yi made the comments in Kenya, which has been active in diplomatic efforts to halt war in Ethiopia since late 2020 between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's federal government. He also visited Eritrea, which borders the northern Tigray region and has been an ally of Abiy in a conflict that has killed thousands of people, uprooted hundreds of thousands, and spread hunger. "To share political consensus and to coordinate actions, China will appoint a special envoy of the Chinese ministry of foreign affairs for the Horn of Africa,...

Myanmar has “all the ingredients for civil war,” Cambodia, chair of Southeast Asia’s regional bloc, has warned ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Hun Sen to the crisis-wracked country. Myanmar has been in chaos since a coup last year, with more than 1,400 people killed in a crackdown on dissent by security forces, according to a local monitoring group. Hun Sen, whose country this year holds the rotating chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc, will visit Myanmar on Friday and Saturday in an effort to defuse the crisis. But Cambodian Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn warned the outlook was dire. “The political and security crisis in Myanmar is deepening, and has led to (an) economic, health and humanitarian crisis,” he said. “We feel that all the ingredients...

Mark Cuban doesn't get emotional on television. Or, at least, he didn't until now. On Friday's episode of ABC's "Shark Tank," the billionaire investor got choked up — a first, according to the other investors on the show — after hearing 19-year-old start-up founder Tania Speaks pitch her beauty company, Tania Speaks Organic Skincare. Cuban then offered Speaks $400,000 in return for a 15% stake in her company, which had made $1.4 million in annual revenue at the time of filming, according to Speaks. The deal came with a caveat: Cuban wanted Speaks to teach his two teenage daughters how she built her business. "I want [my daughters] to meet you, and I want them to learn from you," Cuban said, posing Speaks' mentorship as a contingency. "Maybe you'll even learn something from them." Speak...

As the fastest-aging country in the world, Japan urgently needs to restore the younger population’s trust in the future. The nation is facing economic and societal gridlock due to a vicious cycle: Anemic economic growth in the past three decades has depressed wages, and despite several policy changes, the younger population thus does not have enough confidence to begin starting families. This has resulted in a gradual shrinkage of the population — a 620,000 decrease this month from a year ago, according to a report by the Ministry of Interior and Communications. Meanwhile, the older population’s personal wealth has, naturally, grown over time, but this has not necessarily driven up consumption as older people are more likely to save in this era of ever-extending longevity. These issues a...

HONG KONG: South Korea's equity offering boom has created a money spinning opportunity for issuers and investors, but it has brought little cheer to at least one segment of the capital market: Investment banks and brokerages working on those transactions. LG Energy Solution Ltd's (LGES) US$10.8 billion initial public offering (IPO), the largest ever in South Korea, netted bankers working on the deal less than 1 per cent of the proceeds, Dealogic data showed. Such rates make the country one of the lowest fee-paying major equity capital markets (ECM) in the world. Hong Kong IPOs generally pay fees of 2 per cent, in line with the New York Stock Exchange, while Nasdaq listings net bankers an average of 3.4 per cent, according to Dealogic data. In 2021, the average paid in those markets sat ...

SINGAPORE :China has offloaded nearly four million barrels of Iranian crude oil into state reserve tanks in the southern port city of Zhanjiang over the past few weeks, a trade source and ship tracking specialist Vortexa Analytics said on Thursday. The move comes as world powers are locked in tough negotiations with Iran to revive a 2015 nuclear deal that will include the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil. The former Trump administration pulled out of the deal and re-imposed sanctions. Iran, which sits on the world's fourth-largest oil reserves, relies heavily on oil revenue, but sanctions have prevented it from pumping at anywhere near capacity since 2018. The refilling of China's strategic petroleum reserves also comes ahead of a plan to release oil from its emergency stockpile...

HONG KONG : British fund manager abrdn is seeking a partner in China for its foray into the wealth management business, its chairman said, potentially joining a growing list of global financial firms eyeing a bigger share of that market. A string of foreign names including BlackRock, Amundi, Schroders, BNP Paribas, and UBS have moved towards forming majority-owned wealth management ventures since Beijing first permitted it in 2019. "In the wealth asset management space (in China), we would like to find the appropriate partner," Douglas Flint, chairman of the Edinburgh-based fund manager, created via a merger of asset managers Standard Life and Aberdeen in 2017, said. "Foreign majority ownership partnerships with Chinese institutions is the way that many firms are going in. That's certai...

WASHINGTON :World stocks rallied on Friday as investors turned their eyes toward corporate earnings and ignored geopolitical turmoil and Federal Reserve tightening concerns. Strong earnings from tech firms including Apple, which rose nearly 7per cent after reporting record sales over the holiday quarter, buoyed U.S. markets during the session. All three major U.S. stock indexes closed higher. However, the pan-European STOXX 600 index closed down 0.99per cent on the day for a fourth week of losses, weighed down by worries over the situation in Russia and Ukraine. [.N][EU] Economic data helped eased inflation fears, with U.S. data showing consumer spending and labor cost rises were weaker than expected in December. "The widely-watched employment cost index came in a touch softer than exp...

As local governments race to reclaim land ahead of a looming restructuring of China Evergrande Group, a wrecking ball headed for 39 apartment blocks on a tropical island at China's southern tip poses the latest threat for the embattled developer. The government of Danzhou, a city in the province of Hainan, has asked Evergrande to tear down what it says are illegal buildings within 10 days. The order was signed Dec. 30, meaning the company could start demolition work on the near-complete condos by Jan. 9. The Hainan order is among the most extreme in a spate of government actions to seize Evergande’s property and land holdings, underscoring risks to its most-prized assets as the firm prepares for what could be the largest restructuring ever in China. In recent months, at least 11 land pa...

BOSTON :Wall Street's headache over the potential of a relatively fast pullback from stimulus by the U.S. Federal Reserve lingered Thursday as stocks sold off again and government bond yields mostly marched higher. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 170.64 points, or 0.47per cent, to 36,236.47, the S&P 500 lost 4.53 points, or 0.10per cent, to 4,696.05 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 19.31 points, or 0.13per cent, to 15,080.87. Stocks fell sharply in Asia and Europe too after Wall Street's technology-heavy Nasdaq index plunged more than 3per cent on Wednesday. Minutes released on Wednesday from the Fed's December meeting https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/fed-may-need-hike-rates-faster-reduce-balance-sheet-quickly-minutes-show-2022-01-05 had shown that a tight jobs market and unrele...