Bloomberg Vietnam has its first female president with the appointment of Vice President Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thinh after Tran Dai Quang died on Friday from a serious illness. Thinh will be the acting president until the National Assembly elects a new leader, according to a statement on the government website, which cited parliament chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan. Thinh has ...

Bloomberg Investors stung by the sell-off in gold are going to need more than cheap equities and stabilising bullion prices to wade back into mining-company stocks. Bullion has slipped 8.2 percent this year as a stronger dollar and expanding global economy diminished demand for the metal as a haven. Miners have fared even worse, with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Gold ...

Bloomberg Two of the year’s worst-performing Asia-Pacific currencies are poised to enter the fourth quarter with dramatically different support from their central banks. New Zealand officials are expected to keep the possibility of a rate cut on the table when they meet on Thursday, wary of a slump in business confidence even as growth has shown recent signs of picking ...

Bloomberg The smoking towers of the Port Talbot steelworks have dominated the South Wales skyline for more than a century. If they’re to continue to do so for decades to come, they’ll need to make more money. The past decade has seen some of the most traumatic years for the plant. Hurt by the global financial crisis and then by ...

Bloomberg Kumar Mangalam Birla, the billionaire chairman of the acquisitive Indian conglomerate that bears his name, said he’s hungry for more deals after creating the nation’s biggest mobile-phone operator. His Aditya Birla Group continues to look for targets in the US, Europe and India that make business sense and are likely to add value, the 51-year-old said at Bloomberg’s India ...

Bloomberg India, the world’s top sugar producer after Brazil, is considering a proposal to provide 45 billion rupees ($617 million) assistance to sugar mills to boost exports and cut domestic surplus next year. The government plans to provide a subsidy of 13.88 rupees per 100 kilograms of cane to sugar mills in the year starting from October 1, compared with ...

Bloomberg One of the top 10 shareholders in Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. is “skeptical” on the value that will be created from the group’s $62 billion takeover of rare disease specialist Shire Plc, the Sunday Times reported, citing the unidentified investor. The deal, the biggest in Osaka-based Takeda’s history, has already faced opposition from a group of investors that ...

Bloomberg Still bruised from a typhoon that grounded hundreds of flights, Hong Kong’s status as Asia’s top aviation hub faces a new threat: Chinese bullet trains. The world’s longest high-speed rail network extends to downtown Hong Kong starting on Sunday, providing a direct connection to 44 mainland destinations. With the addition of services from Guangzhou and Shenzhen — the major ...

Bloomberg Comcast Corp. won a bidding war for Sky Plc with a $39 billion offer for Europe’s largest satellite broadcaster, staving off rivals 21st Century Fox Inc. and Walt Disney Co. to extend the US cable giant’s empire abroad. In a rare auction overseen by UK regulators, Comcast bid 10 percent more than Fox on Saturday, all but assuring that ...

Bloomberg Porsche AG will stop offering diesel versions of its cars, marking the latest blow for the technology that has come under intense scrutiny by regulators and environmental groups. Porsche will focus on gasoline, electric and hybrid vehicles because demand for diesel is declining, the Stuttgart, Germany-based manufacturer said in an emailed statement. For the sportscar manufacturer diesel “has traditionally ...