Chinese President Xi Jinping seems interested in embracing the role of global steward — champion of the liberal political and economic order the U.S. administration seems uninterested in promoting. Now is his moment to prove he’s serious. China’s erstwhile client North Korea has become an urgent threat to stability — Xi’s stated top priority — from one end of ...

  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clinched a landslide victory in key state elections that are seen as a referendum on the performance of Modi’s three-year-old government. BJP won 311 out of 403 seats in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. The historic verdict would boost Modi’s chances of winning another term as India’s prime minister in ...

  To committed readers of the financial press, it was almost impossible to miss the proclamations that a milestone had been passed: The bull market, as of yesterday, was eight years old. For a sampling of examples see this, this, this, this, this or this. This formulation is wrong, since it misconstrues the definition of a bull market. Rather than ...

  Global asset markets may not be taking Janet Yellen’s warnings on rate increases too seriously, but Singapore got Fed-ready with the surprise announcement that the city is easing property curbs. Starting in 2009, those restrictions on buying, selling and financing real estate came in waves of increasing severity after Singapore found its open economy inundated with cheap money printed ...

  The trigger of Article 50 is the event traders have been waiting for since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. Yet as Prime Minister Theresa May approaches her end-March deadline for launching Brexit, there is no consensus on what it means for markets. The pound has slumped 18 percent and the country’s benchmark equities index has rallied ...

  DUBAI / Reuters Speculation over a possible merger between Dubai-based Shuaa Capital and Bahrain’s GFH Financial spurred heavy turnover in their shares on Monday, while the banking and insurance sectors dragged the Saudi Arabian stock index lower. Shuaa climbed 3.2 percent to a seven-year closing high of 1.93 dirhams, bringing its gains to 18.4 percent since Sunday. The Dubai-listed ...

  Bloomberg For sale: stakes in oil fields. Bids from world class energy companies preferred. Pipelines and terminals associated with the deposits only blown up about a dozen times in the past year. Deal may depend on crude prices. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s government on March 7 proposed a plan to jump start the economy by, among other things, selling ...

  Bloomberg The future of the Canadian oil sands is looking a lot more Canadian. Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. said it will spend C$12.7 billion ($9.4 billion), its biggest purchase ever, to buy Alberta oil fields and facilities that process the sticky bitumen from oil sands from Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Marathon Oil Corp. “At the time you ...

  Bloomberg Libya’s crude output dropped 11 percent as clashes among rival armed groups over the last 11 days led to the closing of some of the OPEC nation’s biggest oil export terminals, forcing a number of fields to halt production. Output fell by about 80,000 barrels a day to 620, 000 barrels since fighting among armed groups broke out ...

  Bloomberg Oil steadied below $49 a barrel as US drillers continued to boost activity, countering OPEC’s efforts to drain a global glut. Futures were little changed in New York after falling 9.1 percent last week, the biggest weekly loss since November. Rigs targeting crude in the US rose to the most since September 2015, according to Baker Hughes Inc. ...