March, 2020

• 29 March

  In Singapore, quarantine comes with sea view and room service

  Bloomberg Student Chelsie Lee landed in Singapore from the UK last week, prepared to spend 14 days of mandatory, coronavirus-related isolation at home. Instead, she was whisked away to a five-star hotel on a resort island. For a fortnight, courtesy of the government, she’ll wake up to a sea view in a room that would normally cost hundreds of dollars ...

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• 29 March

  Tata to spin off cars unit to seek strategic allies

  

  Bloomberg Tata Motors Ltd, the Indian owner of Jaguar Land Rover, plans to separate its cars business from trucks and buses, as the company seeks partners for a unit slammed by the coronavirus outbreak and a global shift to electric vehicles. Car sales in India fell for a 16th consecutive month in February, and that’s set to continue as the ...

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• 29 March

  Hanoi’s largest hospital locked down on virus outbreak fears

  

  Bloomberg Vietnam officials ordered one of the nation’s largest medical centers to be locked down and demanded thousands of employees and people who recently visited Hanoi’s Bach Mai Hospital be tested for Covid-19 after nurses and food workers contracted the disease. The Southeast Asian country, which has 179 confirmed cases and no reported deaths from the virus, has tied most ...

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• 29 March

  China’s $30tn market promise beckons global wealth firms

  

  Bloomberg China’s trillion dollar asset-management market opens wider this week, forcing BlackRock Inc, Vanguard Group Inc. and other global firms to make a strategic decision: Go it alone or work with an entrenched local partner. While the further liberalisation of the investment banking and money management industries in China has been overshadowed by the coronavirus crisis, wealth firms are nonetheless ...

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• 29 March

  Japan all set for biggest-ever stimulus to battle virus: Abe

  

  Bloomberg Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he plans to submit an extra budget in about 10 days to help fund an unprecedented economic stimulus package, while warning residents to prepare for a long battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo, Abe said there was no need to declare an emergency now, but urged the ...

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• 29 March

  HK to provide second round of financial aid to firms hit by virus

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s government will introduce a second round of financial assistance for businesses affected by the novel coronavirus outbreak, according to Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung. The subsidies from the Epidemic Prevention Fund would aim to protect workers, Cheung wrote in a blog on Sunday that didn’t provide details of the plan or a timeline. The government announced its first ...

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• 29 March

  Pipelines ask US oil drillers to curb output as tanks fill up

  

  Bloomberg American pipeline operators have begun asking oil producers to voluntarily ratchet back their output in the clearest sign yet that a growing glut of crude is overwhelming storage capacity. Plains All American Pipeline LP, one of the biggest shippers of crude in the US, sent a letter last week asking its suppliers to scale back production. The notice came ...

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• 29 March

  Buffett-backed BYD to supply electric car parts to rivals

  

  Bloomberg BYD Co, the Chinese electric-vehicle maker backed by Warren Buffett, will start offering a full suite of EV components to rivals and aspiring auto manufacturers to diversify its revenue sources amid sputtering car demand. Among the parts that the Shenzhen-based company makes and now sells are electric-car batteries, powertrains and lights, founder Wang Chuanfu said in an online press ...

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• 29 March

  Russia’s Rosneft sells Venezuelan assets

  

  Bloomberg Russian oil giant Rosneft PJSC sold its assets in Venezuela to the Russian government, in what may be a maneuver to avoid any US sanctions in an escalating fight between Caracas, Washington and Moscow. Rosneft is selling local production, service and trading assets to a state-owned company, it said in a statement. The move is to protect shareholders’ interests, ...

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• 29 March

  Carbon market’s virus blow softened by Brussels technocrats

  

  Bloomberg The carbon market’s automatic stabilisers are set to kick in, softening the blow of the economic slump in the European Union caused by the spread of the coronavirus. The system, known as the Market Stability Reserve and introduced last year, will absorb some of the supply of allowances that factories and utilities need to buy to cover their greenhouse ...

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