October, 2022

• 5 October

  Australian retail sales rise in August

    Bloomberg Australian retail sales climbed for an eighth straight month in August, indicating the nation’s cashed-up households are coping well with rapid interest-rate increases to tackle escalating inflation. Sales advanced 0.6% from July, exceeding economists’ forecasts for a 0.4% gain, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed. Retailers have posted higher sales every month this year. The rise was driven ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  BlackRock, Allianz join $300mn Traveloka funding round

  

    Bloomberg Traveloka has secured $300 million in new financing from investors including BlackRock Inc., as Southeast Asia’s biggest online travel startup counts on a post-Covid rebound to expand in the region. The Jakarta-based company said in a statement it struck a deal for financing with investors including Allianz Global Investors and the Indonesia Investment Authority. The size of the ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  More Russians flee than join Putin’s army after war call-up

  

  Bloomberg Far more Russians have fled abroad than have enlisted in the military since President Vladimir Putin announced a mobilization to bolster his faltering invasion of Ukraine. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said more than 200,000 people have been conscripted into the army since Putin’s Sept. 21 order for a partial call-up, Russian news services reported Tuesday. That matches an exodus ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  Turkey criticises US move on Cyprus security partnership

  

  Bloomberg Turkey on Monday condemned the US’s decision to add Cyprus to a security cooperation program, saying that Washington is losing its impartiality in the dispute surrounding the divided island. The US move came two weeks after it lifted a decades-old arms embargo on the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government located in the south of the Island. In response, Turkey first ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  North Korea fires missile over Japan for first time since 2017

  

  Bloomberg North Korea fired a missile over Japan for the first time in five years, further ratcheting up tensions over Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program and prompting a rare public safety warning to be issued by Tokyo. The missile launched Tuesday splashed down in the Western Pacific about 3,200 kilometers east of Japan, officials in Tokyo said, adding there were ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  Soccer stampede pressures Jokowi to revamp police

  

  Bloomberg A deadly stampede at an Indonesian soccer match triggered by police firing tear gas has added pressure on President Joko Widodo to overhaul a security force often criticized for brutality and corruption. The tragedy over the weekend left 125 people dead and is one of the world’s worst stadium disasters. It was also the first time Indonesian police used ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  Japan defends appointing PM’s son as senior aide

    Bloomberg Prime Minister Fumio Kishida appointed his son as a senior political aide, sparking speculation that the 31-year-old was being groomed as an eventual successor and prompting criticism of nepotism. Shotaro, the oldest of Kishida’s three sons, was named executive secretary to the prime minister, government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said Tuesday, adding that the appointment was appropriate. “Appointments are ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  China tells banks to provide $85bn in property funding

  

    Bloomberg China’s financial regulators told the nation’s biggest state-owned banks to extend at least 600 billion yuan ($85 billion) of net financing to the embattled property sector in the final four months of this year, according to people familiar with the matter, in their latest attempt to address a deepening liquidity crisis. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  Kwarteng signs off on $113b of bond buying by Bank of England

  

    Bloomberg Kwasi Kwarteng signed off on £100 billion ($113 billion) of bond buying by the Bank of England (BOE) as the market fall into turmoil last week, higher than the size of the plan announced by the central bank and an indication of the level of concern among officials about volatility in the gilt markets. The BOE took emergency ...

  Read More »
• 5 October

  HSBC exploring possible sale of Canadian unit for latest disposal

  

  Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc is exploring a sale of its operations in Canada, the latest move to streamline the lender that is seeking to head off a call by its largest shareholder to split up. A potential sale of HSBC’s 100% equity stake in HSBC Bank Canada is among the options being explored, the lender said in a statement. The ...

  Read More »