International News

Bloomberg Euro-area manufacturing growth accelerated to a record in December 2017, capping a solid year for factories which is now eating into production capacity. With export demand strengthening, IHS Markit’s monthly report on manufacturing showed both new orders and output were the strongest in 17 years. Germany’s gauge rose to a record and France improved. Global growth also got a ...

Bloomberg Huawei Technologies Co. warned of its slowest revenue growth since 2013, despite making headway against Apple Inc. in global smartphones. Revenue at China’s biggest telecommunications gear maker probably rose 15 percent to $92 billion in 2017, rotating Chief Executive Officer Ken Hu said in a letter to staff posted on the company’s verified WeChat account. That’s down from 2016 ...

Bloomberg Fosun Group is planning to raise as much as $3.2 billion selling local bonds as the Chinese insurance-to-pharmaceutical conglomerate refinances debt and increases its investments inside the country, according to people familiar with the matter. Fosun unit Shanghai Fosun Hi Technology Group Co. intends to offer 6 billion yuan of medium-term notes after completing registration in 2017, the people ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s economy expanded 3.5 percent in 2017, more than double the initial government forecast as the country benefited from the global economic upswing, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his New Year message. Lee said the city-state would press on with economic restructuring and infrastructure projects such its fifth airport terminal as well as review healthcare policies to ...

Bloomberg A Chinese court has seized all the assets owned by LeEco founder Jia Yueting it could unearth, as the country’s legal bodies step up action against an internet entrepreneur who once declared war on Apple and Tesla Inc. The Beijing First Intermediate People’s Court seized more than $200,000 in bank deposits, the court said in a statement posted on ...

Bloomberg Vietnam is deploying a 10,000-member military cyber warfare unit to combat what the government sees as a growing threat of “wrongful views” proliferating on the internet, reports local media. Force 47 has worked pro-actively against distorted information, Tuoi Tre newspaper reported, citing Nguyen Trong Nghia, deputy head of the general politics department under the Vietnam People’s Military. The National ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook received a 74 percent increase in his annual bonus for fiscal 2017 as the iPhone maker posted higher revenue and net income, after a rare decline a year earlier. Cook’s incentive pay totalled $9.33 million for the year ended on September 30, 2017, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a regulatory filing. ...

Bloomberg For Advanced Micro Devices Inc. bulls, 2017 was a year to forget. AMD finished the year dead last in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index after quadrupling in 2016. The gains catapulted the chipmaker to the best return among technology companies in the Nasdaq Composite Index. It also ratcheted up expectations for financial performance that AMD was unable to meet. “Expectations ...

Bloomberg The longest winning streak in two decades propelled cotton to 2017’s biggest increase among crop commodities, and hedge funds are ready for more gains in 2018. Of the nine components tracked by the Bloomberg Agriculture Subindex, only cotton and wheat contracts posted gains last year. The fibre lead the way with an 11 percent advance as demand grew for ...

Bloomberg In the year that President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris accord and downplayed global warming as a security threat, the US received a harsh reminder of the perils of the rise in the planet’s temperature: a destructive rash of hurricanes, fires and floods. The country recorded 15 weather events costing $1 billion or more each through early ...