Bloomberg China is stepping up efforts to ease broad public anger over a mother of eight children who was found chained by the neck in a shack after local authorities were accused of downplaying the matter. The government of the eastern province of Jiangsu is forming a team to “find the truth, punish those who violated laws, hold those ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong should consider postponing the city’s leadership election next month, a Chinese lawmaker said, in the most high-profile call yet for suspending the vote amid a surge in Covid cases. Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole representative member on China’s top legislative body, told a radio program that potential candidates might need to focus on containing the outbreak. ...

  Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc (StanChart) will hand back $750 million through a share buyback despite missing estimates, as the bank looks to cost cuts and higher interest rates to boost returns. Adjusted pretax profits for 2021 rose 55% to $3.9 billion, missing a company-compiled estimate of $4.3 billion, dragged down by a $300 million writedown on its investment in ...

  Bloomberg Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) shareholders will vote on whether the bank should tighten its standards for sustainable finance, action inspired by a 2021 pipeline financing deal that was criticised for green-washing and general concern over lax standards for so-called sustainability-linked debt. Investors for Paris Compliance, a shareholder advocacy group set up last year to hold Canadian companies ...

  Bloomberg Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA may seek a capital injection of about $4 billion, in a reassessment of the cost to stabilise the state-owned lender. The amount, which could be a billion euros more than estimated in December, is now seen by the treasury as necessary to comply with the bank-specific capital regulations set by the ...

  Bloomberg US authorities conducting a criminal probe into how Morgan Stanley executives handle block trades are examining recordings of phone calls between the bank and outside fund managers, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry. The recordings involve conversations between Pawan Passi, one of Morgan Stanley’s top equities executives in block trades, and investing clients, the people said, ...

  Bloomberg Uruguay’s central bank lifted its benchmark interest rate for a fifth consecutive meeting amid surging consumer prices and above-target inflation expectations. Policy makers boosted the key rate to 7.25% from 6.5%, their second consecutive increase of 75 basis points. “The international outlook can be characterised as most inflationary in past decades,” central bankers wrote in a statement. They ...

  Bloomberg Citigroup Inc is moving half a dozen senior equities staff from Hong Kong to Singapore and other markets, in one of the biggest signs yet the Chinese territory’s steadfast zero-Covid approach is prompting global banks to shift key staff out of the Asian financial hub. Lee McQueen, head of pan Asia equity blocks, is among managing directors relocating ...

  Bloomberg A yearlong slide in Chinese technology stocks that wiped out $1.5 trillion in market value may finally be ending as investors look beyond regulatory hurdles to focus on valuations. Just 12 months ago, a rally that pushed Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech Index to the highest level since a July 2020 inception started to unravel as traders raced ...

  Bloomberg Stocks were mixed on Thursday as traders weighed geopolitical developments and a flurry of corporate earnings. The Stoxx 600 Index was little changed, while US equity futures fall. Havens such as the yen and gold pushed higher. US 10-year Treasury yields retreated to about 2%. Crude oil declined. Russian-backed separatists claimed Ukrainian forces violated cease-fire rules overnight, according ...