The company that makes your iPhones isn’t the only Apple that matters on global markets. Have a look what’s happening in China. Trading volume in the apple futures that launched on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange in December has been soaring in recent months. On May 15 alone, 4.6 million contracts changed hands – representing 46 million metric tons of apples, ...

President Donald Trump has indicated, via Twitter, that he’s prepared to make an enormous concession to smooth trade talks with China, offering upfront to ease sanctions on ZTE Corp., the country’s second-largest telecom equipment maker. But ZTE is being punished for deliberately violating US sanctions — twice. The company’s punishment needs to be enforced, not used as a bargaining chip. ...

A plague on all their houses (plus their second homes, and buy-to-let properties)! A report by UK lawmakers on the causes of Carillion Plc’s collapse finds fault with almost everyone involved in Britain’s system of corporate governance. Management, non-executive directors, auditors, advisers and regulators are subjected to varying degrees of opprobrium. The report’s key recommendation – that the government should ...

If Masayoshi Son is to set up another $100 billion Vision Fund, he should use it to tackle Japan’s low birth rate. Not of humans – though it would be great if he could solve that problem. It’s the nation’s position dead last in global entrepreneurship that would be a better cause than pouring money into multibillion-dollar firms. With a ...

Aluminum likes to cherish its image as the green metal. Endlessly recyclable and – in North America and Europe at least – largely manufactured using renewable hydroelectric power rather than the dirty coal used to produce steel and cement, its reputation is so solid that Apple Inc., Alcoa Corp. and Rio Tinto Group are aiming to make it even greener. ...

Bloomberg The technology boom powering Asia’s economies is about to get a reboot. Explosive growth in new-era gadgets such as wearable devices and internet-linked home appliances is tipped to offset cooling sales of smartphones, which has already dinged Asia’s tech manufacturers. “Where demand may be softening in some areas it will be strengthening in others,” Koshy Mathai, a senior official ...

Bloomberg China’s biggest Netflix-like streaming site finally has a plan to get into the rapidly expanding arena of social and user-generated short-form videos. But iQiyi Inc. reckons it’ll take as long as three years to get there. The Baidu Inc. spinoff had long recognised the potential but chosen to focus on its core business out of necessity, iQiyi Chief Executive ...

Bloomberg Japan’s Preferred Networks Inc. has only one publicly available product, a whimsical application that uses artificial intelligence to automate the coloring of manga cartoons. Yet the four-year-old firm has become Japan’s most valuable startup, with a venture capital funding that priced it at more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Toyota Motor Corp., its biggest ...

Bloomberg BMW AG offered another glimpse of its futuristic self-driving iNext car as the German manufacturer seeks to gain momentum in the race to overtake rival Mercedes-Benz in luxury car sales. The company, showing the iNext in a copper-colored version for the first time in 2016, will offer a more concrete concept of the vehicle this year, Chief Executive Officer ...

Bloomberg The first video-game built using technology developed by Improbable Worlds Ltd., the virtual reality startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp., has been released by British developer Bossa Studios. Worlds Adrift uses Improbable’s SpatialOS software, which lets programmers create realistic simulations of massive scale and complexity and run across a cloud-computing network. Softbank acquired a non-controlling stake in London-based Improbable ...