Page 7 - Bob Simison News Today

Singapore’s DBS Takes Control of Rural Lender in Push Into Bay Area Singapore’s biggest bank, DBS, is putting its chips on China’s Greater Bay Area with the purchase of a 13% stake in Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank Corp., marking the first foreign investment in China’s small and medium-sized lenders since 2010. The Singaporean bank will become the largest shareholder of the Shenzhen rural lender after the deal, under which DBS will pay 5.29 billion yuan ($814 million) for 1.35 billion...

JD.com Links Up With Visa to Promote Global Sales What’s new: JD.com Inc.’s global sales unit and Visa Inc. signed an agreement to jointly launch an online merchant subsidies program, targeting consumers in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and overseas markets. By using Visa’s token technology, JD.com’s overseas users will be able to connect their Visa cards with their JD.com accounts and make mobile payments with one click, the Chinese e-commerce giant said. The cooperation will go beyond tr...

Renminbi Takes on More Prominent Role in Asian Financial Safety Net The CMIM’s $240 billion safety net is made up of pledges of $192 billion from China, Japan and South Korea and $48 billion from the 10 ASEAN countries. Significant revisions to Asia’s $240 billion regional financial safety net went into effect Wednesday, marking a key step toward financial self-reliance for participating countries using local currencies with less dependence on the U.S. dollar. China, Japan, South Korea and ...

Huarong Asset Management Shares Suspended in Hong Kong Trading What’s new: Trading in China Huarong Asset Management Co. Ltd. shares was suspended in Hong Kong Thursday over delays in publishing annual results. The state-owned bad debt manager was one of about 50 Hong Kong-listed companies suspended from trading after they failed to report earnings by the March 31 deadline. In a brief online communication with investors, interim Huarong President Wang Wenjie said auditors need more time to...

China and UAE to Cooperate on Tracking Covid-19 What’s new: China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) agreed to mutually recognize health codes tracking residents’ exposure to the coronavirus as part of a series of cooperative measures to boost bilateral ties. The two countries reached an agreement in principle on mutual recognition of health codes during a two-day visit by Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi to the Mideast country, according to the official Xinhua News Agen...

Sichuan to Borrow $1.76 Billion to Inject Into 21 Small Banks Sichuan will issue 11.4 billion yuan of 10-year SPBs at a coupon rate of 3.5% to recapitalize 21 banks. Sichuan province joined a line of local governments to issue special-purpose bonds (SPBs) to raise money for recapitalizing cash-strapped small and midsize banks. But how the government will collect repayment was left vague in some cases. The southwestern Chinese province will issue 11.4 billion yuan ($1.76 billion) of 10-year SPBs...

Former Top Securities Regulator Urges Revisions to Family Trust Law By the end of June 2020, 9,049 family trusts were set up in China holding property valued at 186 billion yuan ($29 billion), data shows. Xiao Gang, former head of China’s securities regulatory commission, plans to submit a proposal to the annual “Two Sessions” to improve the trust system and promote the development of family trusts, he said Thursday. Family trusts are among the most important institutional arrangements f...

Cover Story: HNA Group’s Final Crisis The final crisis for China’s formerly high-flying HNA Group Co. Ltd. began unfolding two weeks before the Lunar New Year holidays. Creditors of HNA and its three core listed companies petitioned a court to order a bankruptcy restructuring after the giant conglomerate failed to repay trillions of yuan in debts. The reorganization may involve as many as 500 companies in a sprawling enterprise that at its peak tallied 1.2 trillion yuan ($171 billion) of...

Cover Story: Can the Virus Still Win? At least seven vaccines against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 have won approval for public or emergency use in several countries One year into a pandemic that has claimed more than 2 million lives and left most parts of the world shuttered, people around the globe are counting on effective Covid-19 vaccines to bring back normal life. At least seven vaccines against the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 have won approval for public or emergency use in ...

Tesla China Apologizes to China’s State Grid After Charging Accident Tesla Inc. apologized to State Grid Corp. of China after a viral video appeared to show a company employee blaming the power system for damage to a Chinese consumer’s Tesla Model 3, the top-selling electric car in China. The owner of the car in Nanchang in southeast China’s Jiangxi Province told local press that his new Model 3 wouldn’t run after charging the battery at a supercharger station, saying that a series of ...