By Choonsik Yoo and Jihoon Lee SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea’s central bank on Thursday flagged it may not be done tightening, sending bond yields soaring, after it held rates steady for a third straight meeting and trimmed this year’s economic growth forecast. The Bank of Korea’s monetary policy board unanimously voted to keep its policy…
By Kane Wu and Yantoultra Ngui HONG KONG (Reuters) – Private equity firms Boyu Capital, Hillhouse Capital and BPEA EQT are among bidders vying for Longreach Group’s Hong Kong-based medical device maker Quasar, three people with knowledge of the matter said. Longreach, an Asia-focused private equity firm, is targeting a valuation of as much as…
By Josh Smith SEOUL (Reuters) – Construction at North Korea’s satellite launching station has hit a “new level of urgency,” most likely in preparation for a launch, a U.S.-based think tank said in a report citing commercial satellite imagery. North Korea says it has completed its first military spy satellite, and leader Kim Jong Un…
JAKARTA (Reuters) – The world’s two biggest palm oil producers Indonesia and Malaysia will send top officials to the European Union next week to voice concern over a new deforestation law they believe could be detrimental to small farming businesses. Indonesia and Malaysia accounts for about 85% of global palm oil exports and the EU…
(Reuters) -Ratings agency Fitch put the United States’ credit on watch for a possible downgrade on Wednesday, raising the stakes as talks over the country’s debt ceiling go down to the wire, and adding to the jitters in global markets. Fitch put the country’s “AAA” rating, its highest rank, on a negative watch in a…
(Reuters) -Ratings agency Fitch put the United States’ credit on watch for a possible downgrade on Wednesday, raising the stakes as talks over the country’s debt ceiling go down to the wire, and adding to the jitters in global markets. Fitch put the country’s “AAA” rating, its highest rank, on a negative watch in a…
By Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of South Korean artillery rounds are on their way to Ukraine via the United States, after Seoul’s initial resistance toward arming Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. The Journal, citing unnamed sources, said Seoul had reached a “confidential arrangement” with Washington to transfer the…
By Michael Martina and Humeyra Pamuk WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. State Department’s top China policy official Rick Waters is set to step down at a time of fraught relations between Washington and Beijing. Waters, deputy assistant secretary of State for China and Taiwan who leads the department’s recently created China House policy division, will leave…
TOKYO (Reuters) – Automakers, including Toyota and Volkswagen, should decarbonise their steel supply and cut back on the material’s consumption by reducing the size of vehicle models, Greenpeace said on Thursday. As a transition to battery-powered cars brings down the amount of greenhouse gases that are released during the usage of a vehicle, a growing…
By Ankur Banerjee SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Asian shares fell to a two-month low on Thursday, and the U.S. dollar rose as the impasse in negotiations to raise the U.S. debt ceiling kept investors wary of risky assets due to the hit the global economy will take if the U.S. government defaults. MSCI’s broadest index of…
