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Bloomberg Bordered by China and South Korea, two early victims of coronavirus, Kim Jong-un’s North Korea claims it has evaded the pandemic with no cases of infection. Diplomats and experts piecing together the clues see a different picture. Kim brought his already isolated country to a near standstill by sealing the borders in January to stop the virus, which halted ...

Bloomberg Serbia suspended all preparations for parliamentary elections scheduled for April 26 after imposing a state of emergency that effectively bans public activity in order to contain the coronavirus outbreak, the country’s electoral commission said. Preparations for the ballot will resume after the state of emergency is lifted, the commission said. Serbia closed its borders to all foreigners but Chinese, ...

Bloomberg US equity futures fluctuated on Tuesday and European stocks dropped as investors struggled to find their feet after the biggest plunge on Wall Street since 1987. The dollar jumped, while Treasuries retreated with gold. It was another day of volatility, with contracts on American share gauges at one point rising by their daily limits in the wake of the ...

Bloomberg India’s benchmark stock index closed negative, reversing gains, after the country’s central bank announced a currency swap and measures to boost liquidity but held back from following global peers with an emergency rate cut. The S&P BSE Sensex fell 2.6% to 30,579 as of the 3:30 pm close in Mumbai on Tuesday after dropping as much as 3.2% and ...

Bloomberg Indonesian stocks slumped on Tuesday, triggering a trading halt for the third time in a week. The Jakarta Composite Index ended the day down 5% to its lowest level since January 2016. A total of $356 million in equity value changed hands as of the time of the market suspension , Laksono Widodo, director of trading and membership at ...

Bloomberg Japanese banks tapped into the Federal Reserve’s revamped swap lines, taking up a total of about $32 billion in the first operation since the US central bank lowered rates on Sunday. Lenders from the Asian nation borrowed about $30.3 billion for 84 days at 0.370% in the swap coordinated by The Bank of Japan. They borrowed about $2.05 billion ...

Bloomberg Chinese banks face an unprecedented drop in profits this year as bad loans surge because of the coronavirus outbreak, according to UBS Group AG. In a severe downside case, China’s banking industry could see bad debt jump to 5.2 trillion yuan in 2020, UBS analysts led by May Yan said. The estimate is based on an assumption that China’s ...

Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. told employees if they can work from home to begin doing so this week, escalating efforts to prevent the deadly coronavirus from spreading among staff. Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd. has gone further, telling the vast majority of its staff globally to work from home. Citigroup’s directive, which applies to employees in the ...

Bloomberg The Indonesian rupiah dropped to its weakest since the emerging market rout of 2018, as a sell-off in the nation’s bonds and stocks show little signs of abating with a worsening coronavirus pandemic. The currency slipped as much as 1.5% to 15,160 per dollar on Tuesday, the lowest since November 2018. The benchmark 10-year bond yield surged 17 basis ...

Bloomberg US banks may be downgraded by Moody’s Investors Service in wake of Federal Reserve’s rate cut and as the worldwide coronavirus pandemic rattles markets. The outlook for lenders was changed to negative from stable, Moody’s said. Moody’s cited “the growing strain on banks’ operating environment and asset risk from the coronavirus disruption of economic and business activity.” Major US ...