Bloomberg Thailand has joined the global wave of anxiety over climbing energy costs. A social media furor over pump prices erupted in the past week, prompting state-run oil refiner PTT Pcl to defend itself in a Facebook post by Chief Executive Officer Tevin Vongvanich. The country’s military government rolled out fuel subsides for diesel and cooking gas. The developments signal ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration is slated to unveil biofuel policy changes, including efforts to tamp down costs for refiners while broadening the market for ethanol, according to people familiar with the action. The announcement follows weeks of negotiations by the Agriculture Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department to flesh out a tentative deal struck at the White House last ...

Bloomberg Toshiba Corp.’s former memory chip business, acquired this month by a group led by Bain Capital, intends to pursue acquisitions as it prepares for an initial public offering in three years. Toshiba Memory Corp. intends to rely on its own cash flow to sustain capital spending at a pace of hundreds of billions of yen a year, Yuji Sugimoto, ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc., two of the world’s biggest chipmakers, said they’re being investigated by China’s government after their US rival Micron Technology Inc. received a similar visit from the country’s regulators. Investigators from China’s regulatory agency visited Samsung’s Chinese sales offices on May 31, Suwon, South Korea-based company said in an emailed statement. “Samsung is ...

Bloomberg Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso will take a pay cut to take responsibility for officials under him who altered documents on a cut-price land sale to a school with links to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife Akie. Aso, 77, who is also deputy prime minister, said he wasn’t considering resigning. He’s the highest ranking official to be ...

Bloomberg As Malaysia grapples with its 1 trillion-ringgit ($252 billion) debt burden, it is banking on public support to raise funds via unconventional methods, from donations to a vanity plate auction. The government will offer a series of car number plates bearing the country’s name, ranging from Malaysia 1 to Malaysia 9999, to “cultivate love for the country” while generating ...

Bloomberg Park Hong-sik, a fund manager who correctly predicted the rally of South Korean technology stocks in 2017, has a new bet for this year: Shipbuilders. Four of the world’s five best-performing major shipbuilders this year are from South Korea, including Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., which has rallied 94 percent, according to the Bloomberg Intelligence Asia Shipbuilding Valuation ...

Bloomberg Bayer AG is days away from a transformation into the world’s biggest maker of seeds and agricultural chemicals, saying it plans to close its purchase of Monsanto Co. this week. Bayer will retain its name and drop Monsanto’s as it closes the deal on Thursday while raising as much as 26 billion euros ($30 billion) in shares and bonds. ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is disputing a New York Times report about how it shares data with device makers from Apple and Amazon to Samsung. They’re privy to Facebook users’ information but it’s nothing like the access that led to the Cambridge Analytica controversy, the social network said. The New York Times reported Facebook had struck deals with device manufacturers that ...

Bloomberg Investors are worried that political upheaval in Italy will derail euro-area economic growth. Concerns over the new populist government’s euro-skeptic tendencies and budget-busting spending plans prompted a slide in sentiment among financial-market participants, according to a survey by Sentix. Expectations for the euro-area economy dropped to the lowest since August 2012, when the region was embroiled in a debt ...