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BEIJING / AP Move over, New York City: Beijing is the new “Billionaire Capital of the World.” The Chinese capital has overtaken the Big Apple as home to the most billionaires — 100 to 95 — according to Hurun, a Shanghai firm that publishes a monthly magazine and releases yearly rankings and research about the world’s richest people and their ...

Kuala Lumpur / DPA Malaysian online shoppers are turning to local sites as the weaker ringgit has made shopping on foreign sites much more expensive. Local online retailer Lazada Malaysia said the drop in the ringgit’s value has not really affected sales on its site. In fact, Lazada Group as a whole recorded US$40 million in overall sales during its ...

Bangkok / AFP Thailand’s prime minister on Wednesday told farmers to cultivate less rice to help the country manage its intensifying water crisis, as experts called this year’s drought the worst in decades. Prayut Chan-O-Cha, the junta leader who grabbed power in a military coup two years ago, said his administration was working on a 20-year strategy to diversify the ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Demand for 10,000-yen bills is steadily rising in Japan, even as the nation’s population falls and the use of credit cards and other forms of electronic payment increases. While more cash might sound like a good thing, some economists are concerned that it shows Japanese households are squirreling away money at home instead of investing it or ...

DETROIT / Bloomberg Detroit’s public schools have reached their borrowing limit and won’t be able to take on more debt to pay bills when money runs out in April if Michigan lawmakers don’t restructure some of its $2 billion of obligations, state officials said. Though the district has borrowed when it ran out of money before, it has reached the ...

Bloomberg The Real declined after Brazil’s debt rating was lowered to two levels below investment grade by Moody’s Investors Service, which cited the government’s failure to reduce its fiscal deficit amid deepening political turmoil. The currency dropped 0.7 percent to 3.9864 at 9:50 a.m. in Sao Paulo. The outlook for the rating is negative, Moody’s said in a statement on ...

PUERTO RICO / Bloomberg Puerto Rico’s debt exchange isn’t the only security swap for investors burned by the island’s financial collapse. Franklin Resources Inc. plans to close the $147 million Double Tax-Free Income Fund, whose strategy of plowing more of its assets into Puerto Rico than any other municipal-bond fund turned it into one of the worst performers. After the ...

Bloomberg Man Group Plc, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund firm, reported 17 percent lower profit in 2015 after performance-fee revenues and margins dropped. The shares fell the most in nearly six months. Adjusted pretax profit fell to $400 million from $481 million a year earlier, the London-based company said in a statement on Wednesday. That missed the $455 ...

Bloomberg As the dot-com bubble burst, then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the last firewall between the U.S. economy and a recession is consumer confidence. Given the market’s plunge this year, will it hold now? So far, so good. The risk facing the U.S. is that falling stock prices cause people to start worrying about their finances, and they spend ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump’s dominating victory in the Nevada caucuses pushes him further out ahead of his nearest competitors for the Republican presidential nomination, giving his unorthodox candidacy a major boost heading into Super Tuesday contests next week. The real estate mogul and political newcomer now has won in the Northeast, the South and the West by riding a wave of ...