Bloomberg Hong Kong is preparing to cocoon some 1,000 people involved in the city’s July 1 handover anniversary, fueling speculation that Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the celebrations. Security staff, including police officers protecting a “very, very important person,” will enter the closed-loop system in readiness for hosting an unspecified Chinese state leader, the South China Morning Post ...

  Bloomberg China blasted Taiwanese opposition leader Eric Chu after he appeared to play down a key agreement between the two sides, in a sign of new frictions between Beijing and its traditional negotiating partner in Taipei. Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Ma Xiaoguang criticised Chu for remarks in the US in which he called the agreement that both sides ...

Bloomberg President Emmanuel Macron aims to reform France’s pension system by the summer of 2023, he told French news outlets in his first extended interview since his re-election in April. The reform, which initially aimed to lift the retirement age from 62 to 65, is essential to financing Emmanuel Macron’s larger ambitions for his second five-year term. He discussed those ...

  Bloomberg UK economic growth is grinding to a halt as the cost of the living crisis escalates, a leading business lobby warned. The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) predicted output will be barely higher in the fourth quarter than it was at the end of 2021, with consumers and businesses set to rein in spending as taxes climb and ...

  Bloomberg Nearly half of all Germans can no longer afford their lifestyle as inflation surges from one record to the next, according to a poll conducted for public broadcaster ARD. About 47% indicated they’re strongly or very strongly cutting back on spending. In low-income households, that share rises to more than three-quarters. The survey was conducted among 1,337 Germans ...

  Bloomberg New York City’s requirement that 2- to 4-year-old wear masks in schools and day care centers is coming to an end next week, Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday. Starting Monday, June 13, masks will be optional for children under age 5 in all early childhood settings, Adams said in a statement. “I have always said that the ...

  Bloomberg Italian Premier Mario Draghi said surging inflation in Europe doesn’t reflect excess demand, and there’s still spare capacity to be found in the region’s economy. The former European Central Bank president spoke out on the day that officials led by his successor, Christine Lagarde, are set to stop bond purchases and firm up plans for interest-rate increases to ...

  Bloomberg Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban used his emergency powers to publish decrees on a sweeping set of windfall taxes and to order about $6.1 billion in spending cuts for this year and next. The measures, which will hit industries from banking to energy and airlines to telecommunications, underscore the extent of the budget imbalance that has spooked investors ...

  Bloomberg European semiconductor stocks have gotten swept up in the sell-everything-tech environment even as the industry enjoys red-hot demand that’s bolstering this year’s earnings, because investors are already looking ahead to a tougher 2023. The region’s biggest chip-related companies, ASML Holding NV and Infineon Technologies AG, have lost a quarter of their value this year and are trading at ...

Bloomberg Bank stocks down under have seen about $32 billion of market capitalisation erased this week on growing concerns that faster monetary policy tightening might increase housing-market risks and pressure valuations. Shares of the country’s four largest lenders will struggle to outperform given elevated price-earnings ratios and downside risks from the macro-economy, UBS Group AG analyst John Storey wrote in ...