Bloomberg Negotiations between Asean countries and China over a Code of Conduct for the South China Sea will resume no later than November, Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin said during a virtual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The talks come as territorial tensions in the sea are on the rise with countries such as Vietnam pushing ...

Bloomberg Thailand’s outgoing central bank governor said public debt restrictions should be eased to allow the government to spend more as monetary policy options dwindle with interest rates already at an all-time low. Given the severity of the pandemic-driven downturn, Governor Veerathai Santiprabhob said his “personal view is that the 60% public debt-to-GDP limit can be relaxed.” The limit was ...

Bloomberg Spain’s Banco de Sabadell SA is exploring strategic options as consolidation talks take hold in Europe’s fragmented banking markets. The lender, based in Alicante, has been working with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in recent months on options including a sale or merger, asset disposals or buying a smaller competitor. The bank is looking at deals that would allow it ...

Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG won a bid to stall the release of a report into how it failed to prevent fraud and money laundering by one of its former star bankers, Patrice Lescaudron. A Geneva appeals court issued a suspension order late last month to temporarily keep the two-year-old report by Switzerland’s financial regulator under wraps, the cantonal prosecutor’s ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. says it’s probing the role of some employees who may have enabled misuse of Covid-relief funds in what it calls potentially illegal activities. The New York-based bank said it has seen “instances of customers misusing Paycheck Protection Program Loans, unemployment benefits and other government programs” and that some “employees have fallen short, too,” according to ...

Bloomberg The Philippine central bank will begin selling its own securities next week, a new instrument that it said will become its main tool to control liquidity in the financial system. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) will offer 20 billion pesos ($411 million) of 28-day bills on September 18, Governor Benjamin Diokno said on Twitter on Wednesday. “The BSP securities, ...

Bloomberg India’s anti-money laundering agency fined Standard Chartered Plc $13.6 million for breaking foreign exchange rules when it worked on the takeover of a local bank, marking one of the country’s biggest penalties imposed on an overseas lender. An eight-year probe found that Standard Chartered violated the so-called foreign exchange management act — which monitors offshore financial transactions — when ...

Bloomberg Chinese bank stocks: never this cheap, rarely so unloved. Weakened by the government’s call to sacrifice profitability, stung by ultra-low interest rates and the threat of souring loans, the country’s Hong Kong-listed banks have seen their market value contract by $194 billion in 2020 as of Wednesday. Their share of the MSCI China Index has shrunk to a measly ...

Bloomberg European stocks rise with US equity futures as optimism crept into markets that Tuesday’s tumble drew a line under the recent selloff. Shares climbed broadly in Europe while AstraZeneca Plc slipped on news it paused trials of a leading experimental Covid-19 vaccine when a participant got sick. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 contracts advanced in the wake of large ...

MUKALLA / WAM The Emirates Red Crescent (ERC) delegation has inspected life conditions of several families of martyrs in the Governorate of Hadramaut, Yemen. The gesture reflects the brotherhood and solidarity feelings and supporting families of martyrs as well as alleviating their sufferings and burdens. During the visit, the ERC team presented humanitarian assistance including food baskets, school bags and ...