Bloomberg A slew of luxury hotels opening in Thailand amid the Covid-19 pandemic are pinning their hopes on a government plan to lure high-spending tourists, betting those seeking five-star quarantine will help cushion the devastation wrought on the travel industry. About half-a-dozen luxury hotels that opened in Bangkok during the pandemic, or will open soon, from Four Seasons, Kempinski and ...

Bloomberg President Xi Jinping is set to visit Shenzhen this week to shore up plans to make southern China a global technology hub, prompting Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam to delay an annual economic policy address. Xi is scheduled to deliver an address on Wednesday and meet the leaders of Hong Kong and Macau, the official Xinhua News Agency said ...

Bloomberg Protesters blocked a key route into Nigeria’s commercial hub on Monday, a day after President Muhammadu Buhari bowed to their demands to disband a controversial police unit. Hundreds of demonstrators forced motorists trying to drive to Victoria Island in Lagos, the main business district, to turn back at the Lekki Toll Gate in the south of the city. Dozens ...

Bloomberg India opened dozens of new bridges — many of them providing all-weather access along its disputed border with China — in a move that could provoke a fresh round of tensions. Eight of the bridges are in the Ladakh province, where India and China have each amassed over 50,000 soldiers, tanks, missiles and have put on fighters on stand-by, ...

Bloomberg China moved to prosecute an Australian writer detained in the mainland for almost two years on spying charges, the latest strain on an increasingly tense relationship between Beijing and Canberra. Beijing prosecutors indicted Yang Hengjun on allegations of espionage, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular news briefing on Monday. Yang, a Chinese-born Australian national who’s also ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s homegrown investment bankers are rapidly losing their status as city’s go-to dealmakers, supplanted by mainland Chinese rivals who now hold a majority of senior jobs in Asia’s biggest financial hub. While the shift has long seemed inevitable given the expanding pool of mainland talent and dominant role of Chinese issuers in Hong Kong, the recent pace of ...

Bloomberg For some investors, Chinese bank shares in Hong Kong finally became cheap enough to buy. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (ICBC) surged as much as 7.2%, its best intraday gain in three years, after trading at the biggest discount to its Shanghai shares since early 2018. Its mainland shares only rise as much as 1.2%. ICBC’s Hong ...

Bloomberg The Danish government’s plan to fund early retirement for some workers by introducing an extra tax on the financial industry has gained enough support among opposition parties to be turned into law next year. After negotiations into the early hours of Saturday, the Danish Social Democrat-led government announced that it had reached an agreement with opposition parties to support ...

Bloomberg The European Commission is considering setting up a network of bad banks amid growing worries over non-performing loans during the coronavirus crisis, according to German newspaper Boersen-Zeitung. The network would bring economies of scale by directly opening the affected institutions and their assets to multiple jurisdictions, according to the report. It cites a presentation by the Directorate-General Fisma, which ...

Bloomberg Bank of International Settlements’ General Manager Agustin Carstens doesn’t consider the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to be a currency manipulator, according to an interview with Neue Zuercher Zeitung. Carstens told the Swiss newspaper the SNB is merely responding to loose monetary policy worldwide and using the purchases as a defensive measure in light of the large global demand for ...