Category: Asia Focus

Hong Kong property developer New World Development is holding preliminary discussions with banks to extend an approximately HK$88 billion ($11.2 billion) loan by two years, potentially clearing the way for a capital injection.

The proposed arrangement would require unanimous approval from participating lenders and could facilitate a rights issue intended to strengthen the heavily indebted company's finances, according to people familiar with the private negotiations.

New World is considering repaying approximately 10% of the loan principal as part of the extension, with

Japan and the United States have agreed on a semiconductor manufacturing project in New York that could attract up to $21 billion in Japanese investment, with GlobalFoundries selected to operate two new factories.

Japan's foreign ministry confirmed on Thursday that the initial project would cost approximately $10 billion, with construction scheduled to begin before the end of 2026. Expansion of production facilities could eventually raise the total investment to about $21 billion, although the second factory remains conditional.

The agreement forms part

Google DeepMind and Singapore’s Government Technology Agency have developed an artificial intelligence system designed to identify scams within private smartphone conversations without sending messages to external servers.

The technology, announced on Wednesday at Singapore International Cyber Week, uses a customised version of Google’s Gemma model to recognise manipulation in conversations and warn users before they transfer money or disclose sensitive information.

The partners have not announced a public release date, named supported messaging applications or published independent accuracy figures. Their announcement describes

Asia-Pacific economic growth is expected to slow over the next two years despite a powerful boost from artificial intelligence investment, the International Monetary Fund warned on Thursday.

The IMF forecast regional expansion of 4.8 per cent in 2026, compared with 5 per cent last year, followed by a further slowdown to 4.4 per cent in 2027. Its latest estimate for this year nevertheless represents a substantial upgrade from the 4.4 per cent projected in April.

The revised outlook reflects sharply contrasting pressures

Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has intensified its crackdown on suspected initial public offering manipulation, restricting billions of dollars in assets and warning investment banks against undisclosed arrangements that could artificially inflate demand for new listings.

The regulator on Tuesday imposed restrictions covering approximately HK$4.7 billion ($599 million) in assets held through 31 brokerages, while suspending trading in Sichuan Baicha Baidao Industrial Co over concerns that its share offering may have been rigged.

The enforcement action targets two suspected syndicates linked

China’s passenger vehicle retail sales fell 24% in September from a year earlier, underscoring persistent weakness in domestic demand despite a seasonal recovery in purchases.

Preliminary figures released by the China Passenger Car Association on Saturday showed that retail deliveries totalled 1.702 million vehicles, compared with approximately 2.24 million during September 2025. Sales nevertheless increased 10% from August, reflecting a month-end improvement that failed to offset the substantial annual decline.

New-energy vehicle sales, covering battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models, declined 12% year

China will introduce a new employment initiative to help workers adapt to artificial intelligence, officials announced on Saturday, as Beijing seeks to create jobs while managing technological changes across its economy.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security outlined the initiative during a State Council Information Office briefing, placing workforce development and emerging employment opportunities at the centre of China's economic priorities for the next five years.

The programme will focus on aligning workers' skills with changing industrial requirements as artificial

The UAE will participate in the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings in Bangkok from 12 to 18 October, with senior financial officials pursuing discussions on global economic stability, development financing and international cooperation.

Mohamed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, Minister of State for Financial Affairs, will lead the Ministry of Finance delegation, which is scheduled to attend ministerial discussions, multilateral consultations and bilateral meetings with representatives of participating countries.

The Ministry of Finance announced the participation on Friday, identifying

Advanced Micro Devices chief executive Lisa Su met Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor leadership in Seoul on Wednesday as the US chip designer sought closer co-operation on memory and manufacturing amid persistent supply constraints driven by artificial intelligence demand.

Su held talks with Young Hyun Jun, Samsung’s vice chairman and chief executive of its Device Solutions division, during a visit to South Korea that also included discussions with SK Hynix chief executive Kwak Noh-jung. The meetings placed high-bandwidth memory, broader DRAM supplies and

Qualcomm has agreed to license patents underpinning Huawei Technologies’ LogicFolding chip architecture as part of a broad multiyear intellectual-property agreement spanning 5G, artificial intelligence, computing and networking technologies.

The agreement gives Qualcomm access to technology Huawei has presented as an alternative route to higher semiconductor performance when conventional transistor shrinking becomes harder and more expensive. It also marks an important commercial endorsement of Huawei’s expanding patent portfolio as the company seeks a larger role in global AI and computing markets.

Huawei and

DeepSeek has expanded support for Huawei’s Ascend artificial-intelligence processors by releasing core programming libraries designed to preserve familiar developer workflows across rival hardware, strengthening China’s effort to loosen Nvidia’s grip on AI computing software.

The Hangzhou-based AI developer released Ascend versions of several key components on September 30, including its DeepGEMM matrix-multiplication library and DeepEP communications software. The projects are designed to work with Huawei’s Ascend processors while keeping public interfaces aligned with versions built around Nvidia hardware, reducing the amount

Singapore’s Temasek plans to open offices in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi in the first half of 2027, establishing its first physical presence in the Middle East as it steps up investment and partnerships across the region.

The Singapore state-owned investment company said on Wednesday that the two offices, subject to statutory approvals, would operate as strategic hubs for Temasek and its portfolio companies. Some portfolio companies are expected to co-locate at the new sites, giving them a base from which to

Singapore households will pay 10.4 per cent less for electricity from October after lower natural gas prices cut generation costs, reversing part of the record increase imposed in the third quarter.

The regulated household tariff will fall to 28.59 Singapore cents per kilowatt-hour before goods and services tax for October to December, from 31.91 cents in the July-September quarter, grid operator SP Group said on Wednesday. The reduction amounts to 3.32 cents per kWh.

Families living in four-room Housing Board flats are

Japan’s two-year government bond auction drew stronger-than-average demand on Wednesday as yields near three-decade highs encouraged investors to buy short-dated sovereign debt despite expectations that the Bank of Japan could tighten monetary policy further.

The sale of about ¥2.8 trillion of two-year Japanese government bonds attracted demand above its 12-month average, improving markedly from the weak August auction. The result suggested that higher yields are beginning to compensate investors for the risk of additional increases in official interest rates.

The two-year

China Securities has established a regional office in the Dubai International Financial Centre, giving the Beijing-headquartered investment bank a regulated base for serving clients, investors and financial institutions across the Middle East.

DIFC confirmed on Monday that the publicly listed securities firm had received a licence from the DIFC Authority and authorisation from the Dubai Financial Services Authority, the independent regulator overseeing financial services conducted in or from the centre.

The office extends China Securities’ international footprint and is intended to support

Singapore’s Temasek has acquired a 9% strategic minority stake in the management company of Milan-based private equity investor FSI, extending a longstanding investment relationship and committing additional capital to the firm’s future funds.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The companies said on Monday that the partnership would combine FSI’s access to Italy’s mid-market businesses with Temasek’s sector expertise and international network, with a focus on helping companies expand into new markets.

FSI manages about €5 billion and concentrates on

Global government bond yields ended a turbulent week near multi-decade highs after a sharp sell-off pushed borrowing costs in the United States and Japan to levels unseen since before the global financial crisis.

The US 10-year Treasury yield eased to about 5.16% on Friday after touching 5.2297%, its highest level since 2007. The 30-year yield climbed as high as 5.5319%, a level last recorded in 2004, before retreating as falling oil prices offered bond markets some relief.

Japan experienced an equally striking

Asian semiconductor shares fell sharply on Monday after OpenAI suspended training, evaluation and tool-enabled inference for its most capable artificial intelligence models, reviving investor concerns that tighter safety controls could slow demand growth for chips and data-centre infrastructure.

South Korea's SK Hynix dropped about 4.8 per cent and Samsung Electronics lost roughly 4.6 per cent during the session, putting heavy pressure on the Kospi. The declines spread across major Asian semiconductor markets as investors reassessed expectations for spending linked to increasingly

China has placed another batch of low-Earth-orbit internet satellites into orbit after a Long March-8A rocket lifted off from Hainan, extending the build-out of the country’s state-backed satellite communications network.

The rocket launched at 9.32 pm Beijing time on Wednesday from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site in Wenchang and successfully delivered the 26th group of internet satellites into their designated orbit, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said. Independent launch trackers identified the mission as carrying nine communications satellites for

Hong Kong is seeking to raise as much as HK$20 billion through a multi-currency digital green bond sale that could become the world’s largest transaction of its kind.

The government is considering an offering of about HK$15 billion to HK$20 billion across US dollar, Hong Kong dollar, euro and offshore renminbi tranches, according to people familiar with the planned transaction. Pricing could take place as early as Monday, after fixed-income investor meetings arranged this week.

The proposed deal would exceed the

Tencent Holdings has launched Hy Image 3.5 Preview, its latest image-generation model, expanding its push into generative artificial intelligence as competition intensifies with ByteDance and Alibaba Group.

The model supports text-to-image creation, image-to-image generation and multi-round editing, according to Tencent Cloud documentation published alongside the release. It can accept multimodal inputs combining text and reference images, preserve context across successive editing turns and produce images at resolutions of up to 4K.

Tencent said the model improves on Hy Image 3.0 in text

The yen weakened against the dollar on Monday as traders remained alert to possible intervention by Japan after sharp currency swings late last week, while the US currency held firm following a run of interest-rate increases and hawkish signals from major central banks.

The dollar rose about 0.2 per cent against the yen to around 157.20, with trading conditions thinner because Japanese markets were closed for a three-day holiday. The limited liquidity kept attention on whether authorities in Tokyo might act

South Korea’s central bank began a pilot of a 24-hour won settlement network on Monday, advancing preparations to give overseas investors broader access to the country’s currency market from next year.

The Bank of Korea said the Bank of Korea Won International Wire Network started trial operations at 9am local time with KB Kookmin Bank, Woori Bank, Hana Bank and Shinhan Bank participating. Two of the banks completed transactions worth about 1.4 billion won during the initial test, according to the

Asian share markets advanced on Monday as technology stocks rallied on continuing demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, while crude oil prices fell as traders assessed stronger-than-expected energy flows from the Middle East.

South Korea and Taiwan led the regional gains, reflecting renewed buying in semiconductor companies tied to expanding demand for data centres, memory chips and advanced computing. South Korea’s Kospi rose about 1.4%, while Taiwan’s benchmark gained around 1% and reached a three-month high. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares