Foxconn’s China bounty is headache material in Taiwan

Labor in China is no longer cheap, but Terry Gou may have found a new way to profit from the mainland. Gou’s Foxconn Industrial Internet Co. is poised to list in China as early as April, just two months after filing an IPO application. Its Taiwan-traded parent, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., will hold about 85 percent of Foxconn Industrial’s ...

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Trump’s steel tariffs are far more ominous than Bush’s

At first glance, President Donald Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum may look like a repetition of one of President George W. Bush’s mistakes. Bush also imposed tariffs on steel in his second year in office, and like Trump did it in part to keep a campaign promise he considered helpful in the Rust Belt. Bush’s tariffs are generally ...

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Brexit talks go in circles

The most interesting part of the draft Brexit agreement the European Union published on February 28 is its complete disregard for the topsy-turvy mess that is UK’s internal politics. Something has been happening there every day —a major speech, a heated exchange, a clash of ambitions. Yet the EU’s position hasn’t evolved since the preliminary deal in December, and perhaps ...

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China’s edge in big data isn’t enough

The digital world relies on data, and no one produces more of it than China’s 1.4 billion internet users. The vast wealth of information these users emit has helped Chinese tech companies become some of the world’s best, and led to speculation that China will inevitably dominate future technologies, such as artificial intelligence. But this is almost certainly mistaken. Data, ...

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Nafta’s biggest challenge may come after a deal

US, Canadian and Mexican negotiators are cloistered in the Camino Real on the edge of Polanco in Mexico City, their sessions extending late in the night as they prepare for the arrival of ministers for the next round of talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). To contrast with the crackling tension ending the earlier meetings in Montreal, ...

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Investigators to quiz Indian bank chiefs over $2bn fraud

Bloomberg Federal investigators are seeking to question the chiefs of India’s biggest lenders as they widen their probe into the $2 billion fraud at Punjab National Bank. The Enforcement Directorate has written to the heads of 31 banks asking to meet officials about the fraud, according to people familiar with the matter. The investigators will start with state-run PNB on ...

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Kazakh financial hub eyes sovereign sukuk

Reuters Kazakhstan’s financial centre expects the government to issue Islamic bonds, or sukuk, in coming months as part of efforts to develop Islamic finance business in the central Asian country, an official said on Tuesday. Final legislative changes to allow issuance of sovereign sukuk are nearly complete, alongside registration of a special purpose vehicle by the Ministry of Finance, said ...

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Egypt EFG Hermes weighs hiring more bankers for Saudi deals

DUBAI / Reuters Egypt’s EFG Hermes is considering adding 20 percent more staff as one of the region’s biggest investment banks expects an improved deals outlook in Saudi Arabia by the second half of the year, a senior executive told Reuters. “There is massive interest in Saudi, but you will find that a lot of people are looking at it ...

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Saudi central bank ends repo pacts

RIYADH / Reuters Saudi Arabia’s central bank said it would no longer offer repurchase agreements for seven-, 28- and 90-day periods, after short-term Saudi money market rates fell below US rates for the first time in nine years. In a brief statement, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency said it no longer needed to use the instruments and aimed to preserve ...

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Lebanese dollar reserves recover from 2017 crisis

DUBAI / Reuters The Lebanese central bank’s dollar reserves climbed by $1.4 billion in the first two months of the year and its total assets in dollars exceeded $43 billion, recovering from a decline during a political crisis at the end of last year, its governor said on Tuesday. Governor Riad Salameh said political conditions in the country had “returned ...

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