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Tokyo / Bloomberg Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Foxconn Technology Group’s flagship company, on Sunday denied media reports that the bailout of Sharp Corp. will be approved and signed on March 31, a day after Hon Hai’s board meets. Progress in talks to acquire troubled Japanese electronics maker Sharp will determine whether the deal is discussed at the board meeting, ...

Bangkok / DPA Plans to strip Thais of their national identification card for failing to pay a long-standing education debt would be difficult to implement and could be a violation of their human rights violation, graduates have said. The Student Loan Fund (SLF) is considering co-ordinating with the Interior Ministry to not renew the national identification cards of debtors. A ...

SYDNEY / Reuters A tiny fruit fly is Australia’s undermining efforts to grow its $ 3 billion fruit and vegetable exports, the country despite reaching a series of free trade agreements with its largest trading partners in Asia. Australia sealed trade agreements with China, Japan and Korea last year — deals that guaranteed a significant reduction in tariffs for agriculture ...

Beijing / Reuters China’s industrial profits returned to growth in the first two months of 2016, despite weakening business conditions and slowing economic growth in the world’s second-largest economy. Profits earned by Chinese industrial firms in January and February combined rose 4.8 percent from a year earlier, totalling 780.7 billion yuan ($ 119.8 billion) in the two-month period, the National ...

Tokyo / DPA Japan’s consumer spending is lagging as households prefer savings over investments, despite an upward trend in personal income due to improved employment conditions, according to a Bank of Japan survey. The total amount of financial assets possessed by individuals in cash or savings hit a record high of 902 trillion yen (US$7.98 trillion) at the end of ...

Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc dropped the most in a month as oil fell and Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) Banking Group Ltd. warned plunging resource prices had pushed up bad debts, renewing concern that the British lender may face more pain from its own commodity loans. ANZ, which has Australia’s biggest exposure to commodities, said provisions for bad debts would ...

Bloomberg Chiba Bank Ltd. is forming an alliance with Musashino Bank Ltd. in what could herald a new way for Japanese regional lenders to cope with industry headwinds without resorting to merging. The banks, based in prefectures that border with Tokyo, will acquire shares in each other, they said in statements. While the amount and timing are yet to be ...

LISBON / Reuters Santoro Finance, a holding company of Angolan investor Isabel dos Santos, is baffled by CaixaBank breaking off talks on a nearly ready deal for the Spanish bank to buy dos Santos’s stake in Portuguese lender BPI and hopes to resume negotiations soon. “It’s hard to understand what has happened after the sides have reached understanding on key ...

BOAO / Reuters China’s yuan will come under renewed downward pressure if the US dollar rises significantly in coming months, a policy adviser to the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said. Huang Yiping, a professor at Peking University and a member of the central bank’s monetary policy committee, also said the central bank was managing the yuan against a basket ...

REUTERS The new governor of Bangladesh’s central bank has sent formal letters to the New York Reserve Fed, as well as central bank, and money laundering chiefs in the Philippines, asking them to help recover its stolen $81 million, a senior central bank official said on Sunday. The news came as Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said the government ...