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Bloomberg Even as its neighbours and countries around the world are aggressively shutting down restaurants, theatres and other non-essential businesses to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Singapore is boldly resisting that move. The city-state — seen as a litmus test for containing the spread of the coronavirus — is “doing its utmost” to prevent the spread without having a ...

Bloomberg Palm oil dropped to a five-month low on concern about poor purchases by top buyer India, Malaysia’s move to allow the industry to operate during a nationwide lockdown and an overnight slump in petroleum. The world’s most-consumed edible oil fell 1.3% to close at its lowest level since October as a rout in crude oil prices to an 18-year ...

Bloomberg As a 17-year-old trainee bellboy, Kuok Meng Xiong spent a summer opening doors at his family’s Island Shangri-La hotel in Hong Kong. It was here, sweating through back rooms and service corridors, that he started to learn the hard truths of running a business. Now, after more than 20 years and a career spent helping run the family’s operations ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. unveiled new features for its Teams corporate-chat software, timed to the product’s third anniversary and arriving amid a surge of interest in digital workplace communications tools spurred by the Covid-19 outbreak. Several of the tools may be especially useful for employees in the new world of work from home. Real-time noise suppression should block out the sounds ...

Bloomberg The economic impact of the growing coronavirus outbreak is shifting from service-driven industries like hotels and restaurants to the manufacturing sector on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to a synchronized shutdown of heavy industry that historians and industry experts say is unlike any seen since the 1940s. Automakers in the US and Europe are idling plants in response ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc. will hand out masks and take workers’ temperatures before they enter the carmaker’s California factory, according to an internal email laying out measures being taken while production keeps going. The company also is adding more hygiene stations and rearranging parts of the plant to promote social distancing, Valerie Workman, the carmaker’s head of human resources for North ...

Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government should finance a stimulus plan worth as much as 150 billion euros ($162 billion) to help offset the economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis, Bavarian state leader Markus Soeder said. Measures taken by Merkel administration, including an existing $610 billion liquidity program for companies, are insufficient, Soeder said. His comments come as the government ...

Bloomberg The Swiss watch industry has survived lickings before, but Rolex, Omega and Cartier now face a combination of economic punches putting them back on their heels. The industry was adapting to downturn from political protests in its largest market, Hong Kong, when coronavirus outbreak hit. Meanwhile, Swiss franc, surging gold prices, and store closures are set to saddle firms ...

Bloomberg As companies and government agencies send their employees home to avoid contact with the coronavirus, many cybersecurity teams are facing the unenviable challenge of securing sprawling, vulnerable networks. Every time an employee connects to their corporate network from home, they’re creating possible access points for hackers to exploit. When this happens 1,000 times on a single network almost overnight, ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The central bank of the UAE has revealed the country’s banking indicator figures for February, noting gross banks’ assets totalled AED3.095 trillion. The February gross banks’ assets total represents a year-on-year increase of 6.4 percent, compared to February 2019 figures which reached some AED2.909 trillion. This figure is the highest recorded by the UAE banking sector, ...