Vientiane, Laos / AFP Staunch China ally Cambodia is preventing Southeast Asia from reaching a consensus on the South China Sea after an international tribunal rejected Beijing’s territorial claims to the waters, a diplomat said on Saturday. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is meeting in Laos for the first time since the UN-backed tribunal ruled earlier this month ...

  Bloomberg PayPal Holdings Inc and Visa Inc just made up after more than a decade sparring over the future of digital payments. The two companies announced an agreement in which PayPal will stop discouraging customers from linking accounts to Visa cards and share more data with the card network in exchange for “long-term Visa fee certainty” and other incentives. ...

  Bloomberg The world’s largest currency trader says forget about the Federal Reserve driving the dollar higher, even if the central bank does raise interest rates later this year. The greenback, which strengthened for a third week for the first time since May, is more likely to trade on evidence of US economic growth than on what the central bank ...

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co plans to exit the business of settling government securities for most dealers by the end of 2017, including some transactions in a key corner of the US$1.6 trillion repurchase-agreement market. The departure from the business of facilitating settlement of such trades with 30 dealers and broker-dealers, a fraction of the bank’s hundreds of clients, ...

  Bloomberg Azerbaijan closed down four more banks as the former Soviet Union’s third-largest crude exporter reels from the worst collapse in oil prices in a generation. The Financial Markets Supervisory Authority revoked the licenses of Dekabank, Kredobank, Parabank and Zaminbank to “reduce risks in the banking sector, ensure financial sustainability and increase trust,” Rufat Aslanli, head of the Baku-based ...

  Swiss watchmakers sailed into a perfect storm this year. The industry, which generates more than $20 billion in exports, was buffeted from all sides — largely by circumstances largely beyond its control, but it’s increasingly clear that the decline will continue unless the industry changes the way it designs and markets its products. In January through June, the exports ...

  Shigeki Sakamoto SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS On January 22, 2013, the Philippines submitted its disputes with China over the Spratly Islands to arbitration under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Prior to this action, on August 25, 2006, China lodged a declaration with the Secretary-General of the United Nations stating that ...

  Xue Gong SPECIAL TO EMIRATES BUSINESS On the first day of June, a central State-owned Enterprise (CSOE), Cindare Property, affiliated with the Ministry of Finance, placed a bid for the land in Gu Village of Shanghai at the price of 5.805 billion yuan. Its premium was over 303 percent, setting a record for the highest property deal and creating ...

  Bloomberg Boeing Co. said it expects to report a $2.1 billion after-tax accounting cost for the second quarter as it absorbs expenses from programmes with well-publicised stumbles: the 787 Dreamliner, the 747-8 jumbo jet and a refuelling tanker for the US Air Force. The largest blow is related to the Dreamliner, Boeing’s carbon-fiber jet, which debuted more than two ...

  Bloomberg US back-to-school spending will grow 11 percent this year, a sign that families are more confident about the economy and ready to stock up on supplies, according to a survey from the National Retail Federation. Families with children ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade will shell out about $673.57 this year, the Washington-based trade organiation said in a ...