2016 was chock-full of surprises, both in markets and in politics. As Goldman’s Allison Nathan explains, the year began with a perfect storm of worries that had become all too familiar already in 2015. Oil prices plunged and fears of faltering growth and a sharp depreciation of China’s currency escalated, driving disruptive sell-offs in credit and other risk assets. Confidence in global growth faltered, particularly after an […]
By Jake Spring | NINGDE, China NINGDE, China A dusty village on the outskirts of Ningde, a third-tier city in China’s southeast, seems an unlikely place for the headquarters of a potential global leader in future automotive technology. Yet China’s top-down industrial policy diktats – move up the value chain, clean up polluted urban skies, and shift to plug-in cars – have Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) […]
Your daily guide to community and cultural activities across the Emirates for December 26, 2016, including Christmas attractions, food markets, art exhibitions, fitness events, performances, film screenings and family fun. newslide Abu Dhabi Film screening Catch a screening of The Patience Stone. The film is about a young woman in a country torn apart by war, who watches over her comatose husband and begins to tell him […]
BEIJING China needs to keep financial market liquidity stable and regulate its “money gates” to prevent asset bubbles, but it also needs to ensure a lack of liquidity doesn’t cause financial stress, according to a commentary in a newspaper owned by the People’s Bank of China. Chinese policymakers face a dilemma as they need to tighten credit to contain debt and speculative investment without triggering a wave […]
BEIJING Three doctors in Shanghai and one in Hunan province have been suspended pending investigations over allegations they took kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies, Chinese state media reported. In an investigative report aired on Saturday, China Central Television showed pharmaceutical sales representatives paying sweeteners to doctors at six hospitals in Shanghai and Hunan. The bribes amounted to 30 to 40 percent of the sales price of the drugs, […]
BEIJING China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament passed a law on Sunday that will levy specific environmental protection taxes on industry for the first time from 2018, as part of a renewed focus on fighting the country’s pollution woes. Anger has risen in the world’s second-largest economy at the government’s repeated failure to tackle land, water and air pollution, with large parts of northern China enveloped in dangerous smog […]
A man wearing a Santa Claus costume walks atop Jerusalem’s Old City walls on December 23, 2016 An online Santa tracker run by a Canadian and American defense agency mapped the jolly old gift-giver’s path around the globe Saturday, in what has become a Yuletide tradition. Every Christmas Eve since 1955, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has been tracking Saint Nicholas’s annual voyage to deliver […]
DUBAI Iran plans to ask international oil companies to bid for the second phase of development of its Yadavaran and North Azadegan oilfields, a senior official said on Saturday. That means Chinese firms China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) [CNPET.UL] and Sinopec (0386.HK), which have played a leading role in developing the fields until now, will have to compete with other firms if they want to maintain that […]
The FBI has launched an investigation into the security breach that had affected computers of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for several years starting from 2010, according to people familiar with the matter. Senior officials of the FDIC believe that the infiltration was sponsored by the military of China, as revealed in a congressional report that was published in July. Hackers Invade The FDIC According to the congressional […]
A round up of some of 2016’s most significant corporate events and news stories. Smartphone sales © EPA A bright start to the year for Samsung Electronicswent up in smoke, after it took the unprecedented decision to axe its Galaxy Note 7 line, following a spate of safety issues that saw the smartphone banned from aircraft, writes Nic Fildes. The 2016 Galaxy Note iteration won substantial praise […]
SHANGHAI China, rocked in recent years by a series of food safety scandals, uncovered as many as half a million illegal food safety violations in the first three quarters of the year, an official said. Chinese officials have unearthed a series of recent food health scandals, including rice contaminated with heavy metals, the use of recycled “gutter oil” in restaurants as well as the sale of baby […]
On April 7, 14 large blue letters quietly disappeared from the outer walls of an office building in an exclusive neighborhood in northern San Salvador. One by one, the letters came down from the blue and beige stucco walls, leaving behind faint traces of the name of the law firm that had been working there just days before: M-O-S-S-A-C-K-F-O-N-S-E-C-A. Employees of the El Salvador branch of Mossack […]
A hundred years ago, an arms race between the dominant global superpower the (British Empire) and a rising power (Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany) culminated in the mass slaughter of World War One. The deep mistrust between the United States and the People’s Republic of China has all the potential to spawn a traumatic chapter in international relations. Despite its “pivot” to Asia, the Obama White House was cautious […]
That longstanding principle has largely collapsed since the victory by Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a strategy of breaking all the rules and has continued to speak in unmodulated tones. Continue reading the main story “In some ways, Trump is neutering the Obama administration,” said Douglas G. Brinkley, a professor of history and a presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. “They’ve avoided personally attacking each other, […]
The renminbi’s seemingly endless grind lower against the US dollar has been one of the financial stories of 2016, triggering a wave of capital outflows from China that Goldman Sachs estimates may have totalled $1.1tn since August 2015. The once closely controlled Chinese currency has tumbled 6.5 per cent to an eight-year low of Rmb6.945 against the greenback this year, taking its slide since August 2015 to […]
Panama City: From the Panama Papers to the impeachments of the presidents of Brazil and South Korea, 2016 was a year marked by corruption scandals, and by rising public outrage over graft. The question is, will that translate into a lasting demand for cleaner politics? “A new phenomenon” is being seen, said Jose Ugaz, a renowned Peruvian lawyer and the chairman of Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption […]
After the heavy attention on ocean-based plastic pollution, the focus is moving to plastic pollution in the Great Lakes. According to a new study by Rochester Institute of Technology researchers, approximately 10,000 metric tons of plastic waste has been entering the Great Lakes every year from the United States and Canada. The study, “Inventory and transport of plastic debris in the Laurentian Great Lakes,” has Matthew Hoffman, assistant […]
For 15 years, Chandran Nair led a top Asian environmental consultancy that was active in China. In 2006, he founded the Global Institute for Tomorrow, a Hong Kong think tank focused on a shift of global power from the West to Asia, at a time when China’s rise is changing the geopolitical balance. Mr. Nair, who was born in Malaysia to a large South Indian family, is the […]
From the Panama Papers to the impeachments of presidents of Brazil and South Korea, 2016 was a year marked by corruption scandals, and by rising public outrage over graft. The question is, will that translate into a lasting demand for cleaner politics? “A new phenomenon” is being seen, said Jose Ugaz, a renowned Peruvian lawyer and the chairman of Transparency International, a Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog, who expressed […]
By David Stanway | SHANGHAI SHANGHAI China has publicly named more than 20 enterprises it says broke environmental rules during this week’s outbreak of hazardous smog in the country’s north, its latest attempt to bring lawbreaking firms to account by shaming them. The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) accused steel and paper mills, cement plants, power generators and chemical producers of a range of offences, including ignoring […]
More than four decades after a sweeping British military withdrawal from bases “east of Suez”, the UK is scaling up its defence engagement in the Gulf and Asia in what analysts regard as a recognition of the region’s growing global importance. Britain is reopening a naval support facility in Bahrain, creating a permanent army presence in Oman and establishing new defence staff centres in Dubai and Singapore. […]
Friday 02:50 GMT Overview Asian markets not already shut for the holidays went into retreat, following a negative lead from Wall Street as investors took a breather ahead of the Christmas break. Hot topic Most major global stock markets were on track to finish December in the black, continuing the rally set off by Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in early November. In Asia, Japanese equities have […]
BEIJING Chinese state media on Friday expressed alarm and warned of a “showdown with the U.S.” after President-elect Donald Trump named Peter Navarro, an economist who has urged a hard line against China, to head a new White House National Trade Council. Navarro is an academic and one-time investment adviser who has authored books such as “Death by China: How America Lost its Manufacturing Base”. The book […]
SHANGHAI A massive load of garbage, including needles and broken bottles, has washed ashore on an island close to Shanghai, after two ships allegedly dumped more than 100 tonnes of waste in the Yangtze River, the Shanghai Daily reported on Friday. China’s speedy industrial development has seen it struggling to regulate waste disposal, leading to toxic waterways and cities blanketed in smog. The waste has been floating […]
