International News

Bloomberg As Malaysia grapples with its 1 trillion-ringgit ($252 billion) debt burden, it is banking on public support to raise funds via unconventional methods, from donations to a vanity plate auction. The government will offer a series of car number plates bearing the country’s name, ranging from Malaysia 1 to Malaysia 9999, to “cultivate love for the country” while generating ...

Bloomberg Park Hong-sik, a fund manager who correctly predicted the rally of South Korean technology stocks in 2017, has a new bet for this year: Shipbuilders. Four of the world’s five best-performing major shipbuilders this year are from South Korea, including Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., which has rallied 94 percent, according to the Bloomberg Intelligence Asia Shipbuilding Valuation ...

Bloomberg Bayer AG is days away from a transformation into the world’s biggest maker of seeds and agricultural chemicals, saying it plans to close its purchase of Monsanto Co. this week. Bayer will retain its name and drop Monsanto’s as it closes the deal on Thursday while raising as much as 26 billion euros ($30 billion) in shares and bonds. ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is disputing a New York Times report about how it shares data with device makers from Apple and Amazon to Samsung. They’re privy to Facebook users’ information but it’s nothing like the access that led to the Cambridge Analytica controversy, the social network said. The New York Times reported Facebook had struck deals with device manufacturers that ...

Bloomberg Investors are worried that political upheaval in Italy will derail euro-area economic growth. Concerns over the new populist government’s euro-skeptic tendencies and budget-busting spending plans prompted a slide in sentiment among financial-market participants, according to a survey by Sentix. Expectations for the euro-area economy dropped to the lowest since August 2012, when the region was embroiled in a debt ...

Bloomberg Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund could face stricter limits on coal investments down the road, but a previously united push by the opposition to make it happen is showing cracks. The opposition, led by the Labor Party, instructed the minority government to review the restrictions on coal and consider a further tightening. Yet that fell short of earlier calls ...

Bloomberg US consumer spending rose in April by the most in five months and inflation held at the Federal Reserve’s target, adding to signs of solid economic growth that support the central bank’s plan for gradual interest-rate hikes. Purchases, which account for about 70 percent of the economy, increased 0.6 percent from the prior month, topping forecasts, after a 0.5 ...

Bloomberg Even as defense ministers and military chiefs meeting in Singapore called out China for parking missiles on outposts in the disputed South China Sea, a bigger potential China-related hot spot looms. Concern about Taiwan — and recent sparring between Beijing and Washington over the democratically run island — percolated discussions at the annual IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, which was otherwise ...

Bloomberg South Korea’s exports rebounded in May following a surprise contraction in April as shipments of semiconductors hit a record high, a positive sign for global growth. Exports rose 13.5 percent in May from a year earlier, while imports jumped 12.6 percent, leaving a trade surplus of $6.73 billion. South Korea releases its trade data earlier than most other major ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. plans to highlight an upgraded camera when it unveils its next Galaxy Note smartphone on August 9, according to people familiar with the matter. The new model, likely to be called the Note 9, will look similar to last year’s model, but will also include an upgraded processor from Qualcomm Inc. for some markets, the people ...