Bloomberg Thousands of protesters — calling for the resignation of PM Prayuth Chan-Ocha’s government and reform of the monarchy — filled a busy traffic intersection in Thailand’s capital on Sunday, ignoring a ban on gatherings and threat of crackdowns by the police. Demonstrators braved rain to gather around Victory Monument, one of the main centers for Bangkok’s public transit, with ...

Bloomberg Guinean voters headed to the polls to pick a president after widespread protests over the incumbent’s bid to extend his 10-year rule. President Alpha Conde, 82, and former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, 68, are the frontrunners in the 12-man race to lead the world’s top bauxite producer. Conde, who’s beaten Diallo twice before, is seeking a third term ...

Bloomberg Jacinda Ardern’s emphatic election victory is seen as an endorsement of an inclusive brand of leadership that may ripple beyond New Zealand’s borders. In an age of populism and confrontation, Ardern’s message of empathy and kindness married with skillful crisis management won her Labour Party its biggest share of the vote in more than 70 years. That contrasts starkly ...

Bloomberg Bolivians were expected to vote in presidential and congressional elections with the socialist movement seeking a return to power a year after their leader Evo Morales was ousted and fled the country. Morales’s ally Luis Arce, a UK-educated economist, is ahead in polls, but needs to avoid a run-off in which voters opposed to his socialist party can unite ...

Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. (BofA) inched closer to its diversity goals last year, and said it recognises more needs to be done. Racial and gender representation increased in most areas of the company, including among senior management, according to data by the bank. Still, the percentage of women in the top three tiers of the firm remained unchanged from ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Thailand extended its 500 billion baht ($16 billion) “soft loan” program for small and medium-sized enterprises by six months to help with the effects of the lingering Covid-19 outbreak, the central bank said on its website. The central bank also relaxed rules to allow listed SMEs to join the low interest-rate lending program, which started April ...

Bloomberg HDFC Bank Ltd., India’s largest private lender, posted second-quarter profit that beat analysts’ expectations on strong loan growth and fall in bad loans. Net income was 75.1 billion rupees ($1.02 billion) for the three months to September, up from 63.4 billion rupees a year earlier, the lender said in a filing. The profits were 17% higher than the 64.1 ...

Bloomberg Westpac Banking Corp. is cutting more than 150 jobs as Australia’s second-largest lender consolidates its international operations, according to people familiar with the matter. The cuts will impact employees in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Jakarta where the Sydney-based bank is exiting its operations. Most staff are locally employed and the process will take one to two years, ...

Bloomberg Wall Street’s top matchmaker for megadeals sees a wave of corporate takeovers coming with a worrying implication for the workforce: a jump in job losses. “Politicians are going to be faced with the uncomfortable reality that you’re going to have more big business doing better and that there’s going to be more losses of jobs along the way,” Goldman ...

Bloomberg Ethiopia’s effort to stamp out counterfeiting by introducing new currency notes is pulling people who’ve never had a bank account into the financial system. Over the past four weeks, almost 1 million previously unbanked Ethiopians have handed in their two-decade-old banknotes, according to the central bank. In exchange, they were given a bank account from which they can draw ...