Bloomberg A planned $20 billion offering by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd would likely squeeze liquidity in Hong Kong, pushing up borrowing rates in the city and strengthening the local dollar. China’s largest company is considering a second listing in Hong Kong, people familiar with the matter said, potentially rivaling AIA Group Ltd’s initial public offering in 2010 as the city’s ...

Bloomberg Noted economist and Harvard professor Carmen Reinhart has become the latest person to sound the alarm about Hong Kong, saying the city’s property market is showing signs of a bubble. “There are elements in the Hong Kong picture that are very reminiscent of Ireland, Spain, Iceland” before their crises, she told the Nomura Investment Forum Asia 2019 in Singapore. ...

Bloomberg Demand from Asia’s growing legions of chocoholics has outpaced the ability of local farmers to supply cocoa beans, prompting a surge of shipments into the region from Africa and South America. Indonesia, the top producer and processor in the area, imported about 240,000 metric tons of beans last year, a record, and may buy more in 2019, said Piter ...

Bloomberg India has the political space to undertake “difficult” tasks to revive economic growth, an adviser to the nation’s government said after PM Narendra Modi was reelected to office with a landslide majority. The government can pass measures to spur investment, Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic adviser at the finance ministry, said during a discussion on India’s politics versus economics organised ...

Bloomberg Tesla Inc is getting close to revealing new prices for the Model 3 in China as it nears local manufacturing of the car. The Palo Alto, California-based carmaker plans to make an announcement about its China-made Model 3 cars on May 31, Tesla said in a social media posting, inviting people to guess the price of the domestic Model ...

Bloomberg The European Union vowed to reject any US push to curb imports of EU cars and auto parts, highlighting the risk of greater transatlantic trade tensions. EU trade chiefs dismissed an idea floated by President Donald Trump earlier this month of fixing quotas on European automotive exports to the US. He claimed such shipments pose a threat to national ...

Bloomberg Vivendi SA’s Canal+ agreed to buy pay-TV operator M7 Group for just over 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) to expand in Europe, where it’s vying for subscribers with Netflix Inc. The purchase of M7 from private equity firm Astorg Partners SAS pushes Canal+ into seven European countries, bringing its total subscribers to almost 20 million, Paris-based Vivendi said in ...

Bloomberg The growing trade war is adding to domestic troubles for the largest Nordic economy. Gross domestic product data is expected to show Sweden’s economy grew a meager 0.2 percent in the first three months of the year, according to a survey. The annual expansion likely slowed to 1.7 percent. The export-dependent nation is feeling the weakness that’s already hit ...

Bloomberg Euro-area economic confidence unexpectedly improved in May, snapping an almost yearlong streak of declines when the region was battling through a host of struggles. The improvement was dri-ven by industry and the str-ongest increase in production expectations in more than six years. That was despite continued negativity about export orders and the business climate. A separate report added to ...

Bloomberg After seeing housing costs jump by more than 50 percent in the past five years, officials in Barcelona are moving to introduce Spain’s most aggressive rent controls. Under a decree, landlords will have to negotiate leases based on benchmark prices set for each property in those neighbourhoods tagged as most desirable. That regulation follows a national law implemented in ...