Bloomberg Central banks in the Asia Pacific pledged to spend billions of dollars and implemented new policy steps to stem a bond market rout. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) and Bank of Korea (BOK) offered to buy bonds worth a total of $13.1 billion, while Japan’s authority said it would supply another $36.7 billion of funds. Australia’s central bank (RBA), …

Bloomberg Bank of Ghana has told the country’s lenders that they must seek approval before declaring and paying dividends on 2019 earnings as the regulator moves to guard against banks taking advantage of eased reserve rules due to the coronavirus to boost payouts to investors. After cutting its benchmark interest rate by 150 basis points on March 18 to combat …

Bloomberg Simon Wolfson, chief executive officer of clothing chain Next Plc, said that the coronavirus pandemic presents the global retail industry with its biggest threat in nearly half a century. The oil price shock of 1973 — when Wolfson was five years old — triggered a stock market crash, soaring inflation and high unemployment. The viral contagion could become just …

Bloomberg Hong Kong will extend Covid-19 testing to asymptomatic arrivals after a sharp rise in infections driven mainly by imported cases, Chief Executive Carrie Lam said. The government will take other measures, including postponing university entrance exams and ordering civil servants to return to working from home, Lam told the media. The resumption of schools, which have been closed since …

Bloomberg American Airlines Group Inc is shifting some of its biggest idled jets to ferry just cargo — the carrier’s first flights without passengers in nearly four decades. The Boeing Co 777-300s will fly medical supplies, military mail, e-commerce packages and high-demand office equipment as more people work from home, the airline said in a statement. The wide-body flights began …

Bloomberg As most Britons were clearing the shops of pasta, toilet paper and painkillers to weather the coronavirus outbreak, Jenny Yeo’s thoughts were elsewhere: her daughter’s room, which she’d been planning to decorate. The barrister from Penarth, south Wales, headed to her local branch of home improvement store B&Q and spent 200 pounds ($240) on paint, wallpaper and wood paneling. …

Bloomberg Ethiopian Airlines Group has lost over $190 million as the impact of the coronavirus on global travel hurts Africa’s only consistently profitable airline. “Under the current situation, it is facing huge challenges,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said in a televised address to the public. The carrier has suspended flights to 30 destinations as demand collapses and some countries …

Bloomberg Oil demand is plummeting — some traders say by 10 to 20 million barrels a day, or a fifth of global consumption — as millions find themselves in lock-down or self-isolating, causing travel to grind to a halt. “Demand has been decimated in short term,” said Andy Hall, one of the most successful oil traders of his generation until …

Bloomberg Australia plans an additional A$66 billion ($38.2 billion) in stimulus for the coronavirus-stricken economy, including cash payments of as much as A$100,000 to small businesses, in a second package aimed at averting recession and savings jobs. The plan, to be announced by Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday, will provide A$25.2 billion in support to businesses and not-for-profit charities. …

Bloomberg Boeing Co. is edging closer to winning a government bailout as the once-mighty company races to secure a lifeline amid the aviation industry’s worst crisis in decades. Backstop financing would start to slide into place next week if the US Congress approves a Senate Republican proposal to provide as much as $208 billion in collateralised loans and loan guarantees …