Bloomberg The first of many trials for Malaysia’s former premier Najib Razak will serve as a key test of the nation’s readiness to get to the bottom of the 1MDB scandal. Najib appeared in court on Wednesday to face seven of 42 corruption and money-laundering charges linked to his role in 1MDB, the state fund at the centre of a ...

Bloomberg Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who led Algeria out of civil war to become its longest-serving president, has resigned after throngs of protesters and even his military allies told the ailing president he’d overstayed his welcome. Though Bouteflika has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, his political demise will deepen uncertainty in the North African OPEC member. ...

Bloomberg Slovakia’s outgoing president is mounting a challenge against the country’s dominant political force, capitalising on a wave of anti-corruption outrage that helped elect a pro-European liberal to replace him. Andrej Kiska will create a new political party after stepping aside in June to make way for the euro-area member’s first woman president, Zuzana Caputova, who won by a landslide ...

Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is maintaining a friendly tone towards China, even after defense officials raised concerns over an increased Chinese presence around a disputed island in the South China Sea. China isn’t after Philippine territory and hasn’t asked for anything in exchange for the weapons and aid it’s given the Philippines, Duterte said in a campaign speech in ...

With recession anxieties climbing, people are increasingly worried about the Federal Reserve’s capacity to respond. I take issue with the premise: I don’t expect a recession this year, and when one does come I think it will be mild enough for the Fed to handle. Three factors seems to be driving recession fears. First, recent data — such as weak ...

European leaders have placed a lot of faith in Theresa May’s ability to get her Brexit deal through an increasingly fractious UK parliament. That optimism looks increasingly misplaced after British lawmakers rejected her plan three times. MPs are now preparing for yet another attempt at sketching out what flavour of Brexit they would prefer: Staying in the customs union, staying ...

Hennes & Mauritz AB is a model retailer, but its pile of unsold clothes has been obscuring that fact. Last week, there were the first signs of that changing. The company reported first quarter pre-tax profit that significantly beat the consensus of analysts’ expectations. Sales rose 10 percent in local currencies in the three months to February 28, and were ...

Ask for a concrete example of the euro zone’s march towards further integration, and you will soon hear the words banking union. At the height of the sovereign debt crisis, European leaders agreed to move supervision of the region’s most important lenders to the European Central Bank (ECB), create a single rulebook, and start centralised funds to deal with future ...

Sometimes being good enough just isn’t enough. That’s the situation Deutsche Bank AG’s Asian employees may find themselves in if a merger with Commerzbank AG goes ahead. Deutsche Bank has relatively resilient investment- and corporate-banking franchises in the region, where Commerzbank has only a tiny presence. But the optics are awkward: It’s a unit stuffed with highly paid bankers at ...

China has become the fail-safe excuse for every bad economic indicator in the world. Among industries, autos are playing a similar role. So it should be little surprise that both have been fingered as fall guys for a slump in Germany manufacturing activity that spurred gloom over global growth and doom in financial markets. The purchasing managers’ index fell to ...