Bloomberg The US and South Korea remain stalled after six rounds of talks on an updated cost-sharing agreement but the allies’ top defense officials said that they hope to break that deadlock next month. “We are engaged in negotiations,” and the “minister and I are hopeful they will reach agreement soon, preferably before the end of March,” Defense Secretary Mark ...

Many commentators have argued that the big winner in last week’s poisonous Democratic Party debate was Donald Trump. But as the world assesses the United States in this 2020 election season, the long-term political beneficiary may be foreign rivals such as China’s President Xi Jinping. The circular firing squad in Las Vegas probably raised expectations abroad that the Democrats won’t ...

Sharp falls in Asian markets and US stock futures on February 24 suggest investors are starting to catch up to the disconnect between the coronavirus’s widening impact and hopes of a V-shaped recovery. It’s a gap that has been particularly visible in metals. China, where much of the economy remains in lockdown, accounts for about half the world’s appetite for ...

Morgan Stanley is trading in its white shoes for Converse Chuck Taylors. That’s the initial impression on Wall Street at least after the bank announced that it had agreed to buy discount brokerage E-Trade Financial Corp. for $13 billion in an all-stock takeover, the biggest acquisition by a large US bank since the financial crisis. It would add E-Trade’s $360 ...

SoftBank Group Corp.’s chairman took to the stage to gloat about the company’s return to profit in a horrible year and to name drop some of the wonderful companies in his orbit. But the most important name of all was missing: Paul Elliott Singer. Getting top billing in Masayoshi Son’s earnings presentation was Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which netted the ...

The house of HNA Group Co. may be no more, bringing an end to the dramatic rise and fall of one of the biggest buyers of global assets in recent years. It was about time. The Chinese government is planning to take over the airline-to-insurance-to-property conglomerate that splashed out over $40 billion in recent years to buy assets including stakes ...

Hong Kong’s home prices have proved resilient to months of protests and now the coronavirus epidemic, a one-two punch that the city’s finance chief likened over the weekend to “tsunami-like” shocks. While a hit is probably coming, the world’s least affordable housing market still looks a better place to be than in Hong Kong office or retail property. Home prices ...

Consumer debt is rising in the US, and the reaction to this news has been both heated and predictable: “Americans in record debt: It’s our own fault,” read one headline in a conservative publication last week. A business website went with something more colourful: “The State of the American Debt Slaves, Q4 2019.” And presidential candidates have chimed in to ...

Bloomberg US equity futures rose on Tuesday while European shares fluctuated as the selloff that wiped out this year’s gains in global stocks showed signs of easing. Treasuries were steady and the dollar slipped. Contracts on all three major US indexes rose, though they pared early gains that suggested American markets are poised to claw back just a fraction of ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong stock investors are the worst off in 16 years relative to the rest of the world as concerns mount over the impact of the coronavirus on an economy already reeling from last year’s protests. The Hang Seng Index is near its lowest level relative to the MSCI All Country World Index since 2004, even after Monday’s brutal ...