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  Bloomberg China Construction Bank Corp is planning to sell asset-backed securities tied to non-performing loans, said a person familiar with the matter. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd is also planning an offering, other people said. CCB is preparing to make an offering of ABS tied to soured loans, and the size and price haven’t yet been decided, ...

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank will keep using all instruments at its disposal to counter the risk of low inflation in the euro region, Governing Council member Ignazio Visco said. “For monetary policy, the main challenge remains the persistence of excessively low inflation,” Visco, who is also governor of the Bank of Italy, said in a speech delivered on ...

  Bloomberg Saudi Arabia hired HSBC Holdings Plc banker Fahad Al Saif to start a debt management office that will be responsible for the kingdom’s first international bond sale, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Al Saif joined the Ministry of Finance on an open-ended secondment from HSBC’s Saudi British Bank, the people said, asking not to be ...

  Reuters Egypt’s central bank kept the pound steady against the dollar at its official foreign currency auction on Tuesday, central bank data showed, and the currency was stable on the black market. The central bank sold US$118.6 million at a cut-off price of 8.78 dollar, unchanged from last week. The central bank has kept the pound artificially strong since ...

  Bloomberg Australian lending to businesses is growing at the quickest pace since the global financial crisis in a sign that the ‘animal spirits’ long sought by the country’s central bank are finally stirring. Loans to companies climbed 7.4 percent in April from a year earlier, the most since January 2009, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. Record low ...

  Bloomberg Memo to Hong Kong developers calling for the government to ease property curbs amid a slump in home prices: Don’t hold your breath. Declines in the residential property market have to get a lot worse before Hong Kong’s lawmakers would consider rolling back measures they introduced more than five years ago to rein in prices, according to eight ...

  Bloomberg Credit rating companies are warning that the financial health of property developers in China is deteriorating even as the nation’s real estate market shows signs of recovery. Fitch Ratings said on Tuesday that a divergence in the performance of Chinese developers is driving more rating downgrades and outlook cuts in the industry, while S&P Global Ratings issued a ...

  Bloomberg After two decades trying to make a life in China’s entrepreneurial city of Wenzhou, Ji Shouquan and his brother Shoufang are ready to head home. They say they have no hope of stepping onto the city’s housing ladder and it is getting more difficult to earn a decent wage. China is relying on millions of internal migrants taking ...

  SHENZHEN / AP Zhong Guoyan sifted through piles of fish at a Wal-Mart in Shenzhen, one of China’s largest cities. She studied the fins, to make sure they were bright red and firm. She peered at the eyeballs — were they bulging? “When I come here, I have a look,” she said. “If it’s good, then I will buy it. ...

  Sydney / AFP Chinese aviation and tourism giant HNA is buying a 13 percent stake in Virgin Australia, the airline said on Tuesday, just a week after the Hainan company scooped up part of Portuguese national airline TAP. HNA, led by Chinese billionaire Chen Feng and best known as the parent of Hainan Airlines, will pay Aus$159 million (US$115 million) ...