News

Bloomberg Grab, Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing company, plans to double its staff in Singapore to 3,000 by the time it moves into new headquarters next year. Grab signed an 11-year lease for new offices in a development by Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust. The Singapore-based startup has a five-year renewal option and will occupy all of the building, which has ...

Bloomberg South Korea’s Bithumb said it detected abnormal withdrawals of the company’s coins from its cryptocurrency exchange. The incident was found through the company’s abnormal-trading monitoring system in Seoul, it said. The exchange then halted cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals and moved investor assets to a so-called cold wallet, which is disconnected from the internet and less vulnerable to theft, and ...

Bloomberg Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, the biggest assembler of iPhones, posted fourth-quarter profit that beat analyst estimates as billionaire Terry Gou cuts costs at his manufacturing giant. Net income was NT$62.6 billion ($2 billion) in the three months ended December, Hon Hai said in a filing. That compares with the NT$36.6 billion average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Hon ...

Bloomberg Indonesia will close an island inhabited by endangered komodo dragons following reports of rampant smuggling of the giant lizards, the Tempo reported. Komodo Island in Manggarai Barat in East Nusa Tenggara province will be shut to tourists from January, the newspaper reported, citing Marius Jelamu, a spokesman for the provincial administration. The decision was taken after consulting the environment ...

Bloomberg Japan’s remarkably tight labour market just got even tighter. The jobless dipped again to around the lowest in almost three decades while the number of jobs available for each applicant has remained at a 44-year high since last year. Even in easy going sub-tropical Okinawa, which has traditionally lagged mainland Japan in economic development, the ratio is near a ...

Bloomberg Governments in the Asia Pacific region are accelerating efforts to fight malicious use of online media, unveiling laws that make it easier to target websites which enable distribution of criminal or fraudulent content. Australia said it will legislate “tough” new laws to prevent social-media platforms from being “weaponised” by terrorists and extremists who may use them to live-stream violent ...

Bloomberg Tech unicorns got a bounce in their step with Lyft Inc’s initial public offering valuing it at $22.4 billion after its first day of trading. Ride-hailing’s No. 2 provider in the US first raised its target range and then expanded its offering to raise $2.34 billion. While the shares closed up only 8.7 percent compared with the 21 percent ...

Bloomberg BlackBerry Ltd jumped the most in six months after fourth-quarter results surpassed analysts’ estimates, boosted by strong gains in licensing revenue. The former phone maker reported sales of $99 million from its segment that distributes licenses for its existing patents to other businesses. That was a 71 percent increase over the previous year and helped boost total revenue 8 ...

Bloomberg Mondelez International Inc, the maker of Oreo cookies and Cadbury chocolates, is in advanced talks to acquire international brands being sold by Campbell Soup Co, people familiar with the matter said. Mondelez is negotiating final terms of a purchase of Arnott’s Biscuits, the Australian maker of Tim Tam cookies, and Danish butter-cookie producer Kelsen Group, according to the people. ...

Bloomberg If Donald Trump’s administration was looking for signs of easing tensions between two of his vaunted constituencies — blue-collar oil and rural farmers — a hearing in Michigan proves otherwise. The two sides exchanged heated comments at a public hearing over proposed changes by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on ethanol policy. Oil refiners and agricultural proponents, including Iowa ...