AFP Chinese nationals became the largest foreign buyers of US homes last year as they pour billions into American real estate, seeking safe offshore assets, according to a new study Sunday. A huge surge in Chinese buying of both residential and commercial real estate last year took their five-year investment total to more than $110 billion, according to the ...

  Bloomberg U.K. house prices rebounded in May after an investor rush to beat a new tax introduced last month left behind a shortage of homes for sale, according to Rightmove. Asking prices increased 0.4 percent to an average 308,151 pounds ($442,000), the property website operator said on Monday. Prices for properties traditionally sought by first-time buyers surged 6.2 percent. ...

  Bloomberg Singapore developers sold 12 percent less homes in April, as tighter mortgage curbs cooled demand in Asia’s second-most expensive housing market. Developers sold 745 units last month, compared with 843 in March, according to data released Monday by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. Singapore home prices have dropped for 10 quarters, posting the longest losing streak in almost two ...

  Bloomberg Hotels in sun-drenched Miami are getting burned by a pullback in Brazilian travel and a building boom that has added thousands of rooms to the market. Nightly room costs are dropping. Greater Miami’s revenue per available room — a key measure of rates and occupancies known as revpar — has fallen each month this year, and in April ...

  Singapore / Bloomberg & AFP The creation of the world’s biggest alliance of low-cost airlines may signal that some of Asia’s struggling budget carriers are headed for the altar. The Value Alliance, announced on Monday, stretches from Japan to Australia and includes Singapore Airlines Ltd.’s Scoot and Nok Airlines Pcl in Thailand. The aim is to sell tickets, or even ...

  Washington / Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co. pilots, frustrated after four years of unsuccessful contract talks, asked the carrier to guarantee it won’t force them to fly Boeing Co.’s newest 737 before the plane is negotiated into a new agreement for the 8,000 workers. Adding the 737 Max before it’s listed in a labour deal would violate a provision of ...

  shanghai / bloomberg HNA Group Co., the Chinese conglomerate that controls the country’s fourth-largest airline, is in exclusive talks with the biggest shareholder of CWT Ltd. for a potential acquisition of shares in the Singapore-based logistics company. There is no certainty that the negotiations will result in an agreement, CWT said on Monday. The company’s shares rose after the ...

  Washington / Bloomberg Delta Air Lines Inc., the second-largest U.S. carrier, is trimming planned growth in the second half of this year to help counter rising fuel prices and weak foreign economies. It’s also delaying deliveries of four wide-body aircraft. The carrier will hold expansion to less than 2 percent while reducing domestic capacity increases to 2.5 percent in ...

  Taipei / Bloomberg Acer’s announcement that it will work with the Swedish games maker Starbreeze to produce a virtual-reality headset could be the ailing PC maker’s most brilliant move in years. Or it could be a colossal failure. According to their joint release, the companies plan to form a joint venture to design, make and sell the StarVR headset. ...

  Moscow / AFP Moscow’s Aragvi restaurant — once the legendary haunt of KGB spies and cosmonauts — has reopened with its Soviet-era grandeur restored.The high-end eatery on the main Tverskayastreet, which opened in 1938 at the height of Stalin’s purges, has re-launched under the same name after a $20 million (17 million euros) restoration. The restaurant opened on the ...