By Eric Auchard | BARCELONA BARCELONA Nokia (NOKIA.HE) sees demand for higher speed 4G network equipment starting to recover this year, led by Japan, the company’s chief executive Rajeev Suri said on Sunday as he announced a series of contracts with telecom operators. Speaking at a news conference ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Suri also predicted a new wave of industry consolidation among telecom […]
Here are the big questions for investors and markets this week. Will investors like what they hear from President Trump? Mr Trump will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday (it’s not officially a State of the Union) and with US equities in record territory, investors are very much focused on tax reform and other fiscal measures. Here’s where the Trump trade — based on the […]
Top executives at some of the world’s biggest banks and insurers will have to vouch for their companies’ resilience to cyber attacks, under tough rules laid down by New York’s state regulator. A new regulation, which takes effect on March 1, requires companies supervised by New York’s Department of Financial Services to establish and maintain a cyber security programme that can protect consumers’ private data and “ensure […]
SYDNEY – Indonesian and Australian leaders on Sunday committed to free trade and closer naval cooperation as they urged countries in the Asia-Pacific region with competing territorial claims to obey international law. Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo arrived in Sydney on Saturday on his first visit to Australia as his nation’s leader. He and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said they had agreed to finalize a free […]
By Joseph Sipalan and Noah Browning | KUALA LUMPUR/DUBAI KUALA LUMPUR/DUBAI Malaysia welcomed Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Sunday for the start of a rare, month-long Asian tour, where the monarch will build ties and seek to draw more investments to the oil-rich gulf nation. The visit is the first by a Saudi king to Malaysia in more than a decade, as the Arab nation courts Asian […]
Image credit: Arqiva Samsung Electronics says it will start the UK’s first 5G broadband network in central London, following earlier trials South Korea, China and Japan. In London, it will work with Arqiva, which is best known for DAB radio broadcasting. Arqiva has a licence to use the 28GHz spectrum across the UK, and will host a number of Samsung’s 5G base stations. Arqiva’s CEO, Simon Beresford-Wylie, […]
Suppliers to Tesla and other electric carmakers are scrambling to secure shipments of the key battery material cobalt after a group of hedge funds amassed a large stockpile of the scarce metal. In a bold wager on higher prices, half a dozen funds, including Swiss-based Pala Investments and China’s Shanghai Chaos, have purchased and stored an estimated 6,000 tonnes of cobalt, worth as much as $280m, according […]
SHANGHAI A fierce blaze at a hotel in southeastern China killed 10 people, the official Xinhua news agency said in a post on its official microblog on Saturday. The fire broke out on Saturday morning at the hotel in the inland city of Nanchang, the capital of China’s Jiangxi province, trapping people inside, including workers who were carrying out renovations on the building. Videos and photos on […]
North Korea is evading international sanctions with a sophisticated network of overseas companies, enabled partly by its continued access to the international banking system, says a forthcoming United Nations report seen by Reuters. North Korea is under heavy U.N. sanctions and a strict arms embargo designed to impede the development of its banned nuclear and missile programmes. The U.N. panel of experts, which produced the 100-page draft […]
By Venus Wu and Greg Torode | HONG KONG HONG KONG Developments in Hong Kong have affected confidence in a system of government intended to ensure the Chinese-ruled city’s autonomy, though its rule of law remained robust “despite challenges”, former colonial power Britain said on Friday. Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997 with guarantees it would retain extensive autonomy, an independent legal system and […]
Sign up to receive Authers’ Note daily by email here Despite appearances to the contrary, the Trump trade may be moving into reverse as the president’s maiden State of the Union address approaches. The overall level of the stock market is, of course, at fresh records. But the pattern within it is shifting again. The end of the week saw sharp falls for almost all equity markets […]
BEIJING A youth named by China as the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, but reviled as a fake by many Tibetans, has pledged to uphold the “glorious tradition” of patriotism that holders of his position have followed, state news agency Xinhua said. Although officially atheist, China selected Gyaltsen Norbu as the 11th Panchen Lama in 1995 in a drive to win the hearts and minds of Tibetans. […]
As with the worlds of haute couture and prêt-à-porter in fashion, France’s small-cap companies depend vitally on the success of the main Paris bourse. Yet as the country braces itself for the presidential election, and as US and other international investors start reducing their French holdings, a flight from the small-caps to the larger, more liquid French companies might be expected. But the opposite has actually been […]
By Arshad Mohammed | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The longest-serving U.S. diplomat warned against isolationism, protectionism and Russian aggression on Friday in a retirement speech implicitly criticizing some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies even as he urged officials to serve the White House loyally. Ambassador Dan Fried argued that since becoming a world power over a century ago, the United States had largely pursued an open, rules-based world, […]
Two years after Donald Trump was booed at an influential conservative event, the US president returned to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday for a victory lap. But his rambling address, at an event that was more campaign rally than detailed presentation of policy, struck a jarring note at the end of a week that saw a semblance of orthodoxy from the new administration. While his […]
European equity funds attracted their largest weekly inflows in more than a year as institutional investors bet on a recovery taking hold across the continent. Investors added $1.1bn to funds investing in European stocks in the seven days to February 22, a haul that nearly matched the inflows of the preceding four weeks combined, according to data from EPFR. This was despite outflows from dedicated French stock […]
The revelation that Kim Jong Nam was killed with the deadly nerve agent, VX, transforms a brutal piece of internecine political bloodletting into something with far broader implications. Although it denies responsibility, few doubt the North Korean regime is responsible — and is flashing signals to its enemies. “It is more than just killing someone,” said Patricia Lewis, research director at policy institute Chatham House. “This was […]
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman starts a month-long Asian tour on Sunday to build ties with the world’s fastest growing importers of Saudi oil and promote investment opportunities, including the sale of a stake in its giant state firm Saudi Aramco. The octogenarian monarch, who has overseen the launch of an ambitious economic reform plan since his accession two years ago, is expected to visit Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan […]
RIYADH Saudi Arabia’s King Salman starts a month-long Asian tour on Sunday to build ties with the world’s fastest growing importers of Saudi oil and promote investment opportunities, including the sale of a stake in its giant state firm Saudi Aramco. The octogenarian monarch, who has overseen the launch of an ambitious economic reform plan since his accession two years ago, is expected to visit Malaysia, Indonesia, […]
BEIJING China on Friday dismissed renewed pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump over its role in North Korea, saying the crux of the matter was a dispute between Washington and Pyongyang. Trump told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that China could solve the national security challenge posed by North Korea “very easily if they want to”, turning up pressure on Beijing to exert more influence to […]
TOKYO Asian shares took a breather on Friday, slipping from 1-1/2-year highs as material shares were hit by sudden falls in copper and other commodity prices while investors assessed Washington’s stance on tax and currency policies. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was down 0.5 percent, giving back part of this week’s gains, though it is likely to log its fifth straight weekly advance. […]
Friday 05.00 GMT Overview Asian stocks looked set to end a solid week on a down note, taking their cue from a subdued session on Wall Street as investors looked past some optimistic comments on US tax cuts and failed to catch a boost from higher oil prices. Hot topic Steve Mnuchin, the US Treasury Secretary, said the White House wanted to pass “very significant” tax reform […]
For a century after the incredibly influential writings of Carl von Clausewitz in the early years of the 19th-century, the study of war, specifically the study of battles, occupied a regal prominence in the field of history-writing. It was taken as a given that the study of battles was illustrative, even vaguely ennobling, and monumental, multi-volume battle-histories appeared at regular intervals, often running to many reprints and […]
The deadly nerve agent VX was used in the murder of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s brother, investigators in Malaysia said on Friday. Analysis of swabs from Kim Jong Nam’s eyes and face found VX, a chemical weapon, according to a preliminary report. It is described by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “the most potent of all nerve agents”, with a […]
