Bloomberg The US is losing its edge as the world’s foremost destination for venture capital investment, a new study shows, with US startups capturing a rapidly declining share of global dollars invested, and Chinese companies grabbing more of the total. Because startups play a critical role in economic dynamism, the study bodes well for the global economy as a whole, ...

Bloomberg Any increase in capital outflows could make it more difficult for companies and governments to refinance foreign debt in developing East Asia, with Indonesia and Thailand most at risk, says the World Bank. Outflows pose “potentially disruptive implications for business operations and solvency on the corporate side, and for deficit financing and debt sustainability on the sovereign side,” the ...

Bloomberg Traveloka, Southeast Asia’s largest online travel startup, is in talks to raise about $400 million from new and existing investors to accelerate its expansion, according to people familiar with the matter. The money will be used to push beyond traditional airline tickets and hotel bookings into activities for travelers like concerts or amusement parks, said the people, asking not ...

Bloomberg Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp. are betting on a future when consumers and businesses will order up their transportation needs on demand, forming a new venture that will develop and deploy ride-hailing and self-driving car technologies. Monet Technologies Corp. will initially introduce ride-hailing services for Japanese public agencies and private companies, followed by a rollout of ...

Bloomberg Secretary of State Michael Pompeo arrived on Saturday in Japan on a trip that will take him to North Korea, as US disarmament demands are increasingly undermined by calls for sanctions relief and President Donald Trump’s eagerness for a second summit with Kim Jong-un. Pompeo will spend less than a day on the ground in Pyongyang on Sunday meeting ...

Bloomberg The chances of getting a Brexit deal have increased over the past few days, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told Austrian newspapers in an interview released on Saturday. “I assume that we’ll find an agreement about the terms of the exit treaty,” Juncker in the interview with daily newspapers Der Standard and Kurier, and weekly Falter. “We also need ...

Bloomberg Interpol asked China to clarify the status of the law enforcement group’s president, amid press reports that he’s been arrested in his home country. “Interpol has requested through official law enforcement channels clarification from China’s authorities on the status of Interpol President Meng Hongwei,” Juergen Stock, secretary general of the organisation based in Lyon, France, said in a statement. ...

Bloomberg Latvians go to the polls on Saturday, with an establishment-bashing upstart injecting drama into the country’s usually dull elections. The tiny Baltic nation is getting a taste of the populism that’s upended politics from London to Rome as a brash new party threatens to rip up the regular script. Its rise challenges the center-right coalitions that routinely prevail in ...

Bloomberg Beneath President Vladimir Putin’s angry denials that Russian spies were involved in attempted murder and hacking operations abroad, there’s palpable unease at the catalogue of sometimes laughable mishaps by his now-infamous GRU military-intelligence service. Accusations by the Netherlands, the UK and the US that four GRU agents were caught attempting to hack into a United Nations body investigating a ...

Bloomberg Former Army Captain Jair Bolsonaro widened his lead in a poll published a day before voters cast their ballots in the first round of Brazil’s presidential election. Bolsonaro would garner 36.7 percent of first-round votes, followed by Workers’ Party candidate Fernando Haddad with 24 percent, according to the MDA/CNT poll. Bolsonaro had 28.2 percent in a previous MDA/CNT poll ...