Bloomberg China’s muted reaction over a US military flight to Taiwan prompted criticism from nationalists online, underscoring the pressures on President Xi Jinping to follow through on heated “red line” rhetoric. The US Air Force C-17 cargo plane made a three-hour stopover in Taipei to carry a bipartisan congressional delegation visiting Taiwan. Three US senators — Democrats Tammy Duckworth and ...

Bloomberg A South Korean court dismissed a lawsuit filed against Japanese companies to compensate Koreans who were conscripted to work in factories during World War II, in a case that has raised tensions between the two US allies. The Seoul Central District Court ruled on Monday that the 85 former labourers and their families suing the 16 Japanese companies, including ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced free shots for all adults in an address to the nation, a move prompted by criticism of his administration’s handling of India’s deadly second virus wave and a botched vaccination roll out. In a half hour-long address on national television, Modi said all Indians above the age 18 will be vaccinated for free starting ...

Bloomberg Armin Laschet boosted his chances of succeeding Angela Merkel as German chancellor by helping secure a decisive victory for his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the country’s poorest state. In the final regional contest before the national vote in September, the 60-year-old party leader showed he can successfully guide Merkel’s party in a tight campaign. The outcome will help ...

Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc and HSBC Holdings Plc are opening their offices fully in Hong Kong as a fourth wave of infections was contained and the US investment bank said half of its staff in the financial hub are now vaccinated. Both banks told staff that all employees would be permitted to return to their Hong Kong offices, in ...

Bloomberg A big portion of consumer deposits at retail banks could shift to digital currencies if governments start offering them, the Bank of England (BOE) indicated in a discussion paper about the issue. The UK central bank modeled the impact of introducing digital forms of money on the retail banking sector and in one scenario considered what would happen if ...

Bloomberg India’s foreign exchange reserves have by all indications crossed $600 billion, central bank chief Shaktikanta Das said, a huge buffer that will help insulate Asia’s third-largest economy from global spillovers and volatile external flows. Earlier this year, the country’s foreign-exchange reserves briefly surpassed Russia’s to become the world’s fourth-largest, as the Reserve Bank of India continued to hoard dollars ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc has begun hiring financial advisers as the lender looks to expand its wealth-management offerings around the globe. The firm is structuring compensation for the newly hired advisers in a way that gives Citigroup shareholders more power than wealth managers themselves, Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser said during a virtual investor conference. Generally, the wealth-management industry has been ...

Bloomberg Zimbabwe has threatened to ban traders from the country’s foreign-exchange (FX) auction platform for exploiting the gap between black-market and official currency prices. Authorities are dealing with an underground phenomenon that has the potential to “totally destabilise the Zimbabwean economy,” Deputy Finance Minister Clemence Chiduwa said in an op-ed in the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper. Companies and individuals could face ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp (BofA) Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said the bank will put more capital into its sales and trading teams, after it took advantage of wild swings in the stock market during the pandemic. “On the sales and trading side, our team’s done a fantastic job,” Moynihan said at an Alliance Bernstein conference. “We’re putting more ...