Bloomberg New Zealand’s new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has boosted his party’s chances at this year’s election, with a poll showing him neck-and-neck with his opponents less than eight months out from the ballot. Support for Hipkins’ Labour Party rose 5 percentage points to 38% in a 1News/Kantar poll published Monday in Wellington, while the main opposition National Party …

  Bloomberg The rupee’s recent gains may prove to be fleeting because of pressure from India’s persistent current-account gap and the central bank building up its foreign-exchange reserves. The currency has lagged peers from the Thai baht to the Indonesian rupiah this month, gaining only 1.4% even amid sustained dollar weakness. QuantEco Research expects the rupee to slip towards 83.5 …

  Bloomberg Top investment bankers in Asia ex-Japan at Wall Street’s biggest firms are having their worst payouts since the financial crisis more than a decade ago. On average, managing directors at banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. (BofA) have seen their total compensation drop by 40% to 50%, with payouts for senior …