Town Hall News

By Noele Illien ZURICH (Reuters) -UBS on Monday said it had completed its emergency takeover of embattled local rival Credit Suisse, creating a giant Swiss bank with a balance sheet of $1.6 trillion and greater muscle in wealth management. “This is the start of a new chapter – for UBS, Switzerland as a financial centre and the global financial industry,” UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti and Chairman Colm Kelleher said in […]

By Ankur Banerjee SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Asian shares stalled in cautious trading on Monday as investors braced for central bank decisions in Europe, Japan and the United States this week, along with U.S. inflation data that will likely influence the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.07% higher at 521.24, having touched a more than one-month peak of 521.94 earlier in the session. […]

By Ludwig Burger (Reuters) -Novartis said on Monday it agreed to acquire Seattle-based biotech firm Chinook Therapeutics for up to $3.5 billion to boost its late-stage drug development line-up with a new treatment for a rare severe kidney disease. The transaction, in the form of a merger of a newly formed Novartis subsidiary and Chinook, is expected to close in the second half of 2023, the Swiss drugmaker said in […]

(Reuters) – Ukraine’s top military command said on Monday its forces were engaged in heavy battles in frontline hot spots, a day after Kyiv said it had made the first modest gains in reclaiming territory from Russia as part of its counteroffensive. Some 25 battles had taken place over the past day near the eastern town of Bakhmut, and further south near Avdiivka and Maryinka, all in the Donetsk region, […]

By Soo-hyang Choi SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean prosecutors said they indicted a former Samsung Electronics executive on Monday on suspicions of stealing the company’s technology to build a chip factory in China. The defendant, who also formerly worked at SK Hynix as a vice president, is accused of illegally acquiring Samsung data to build a factory in the northwestern Chinese city of Xian between 2018 and 2019, the Suwon […]

By Howard Schneider, Leika Kihara, Balazs Koranyi and William Schomberg (Reuters) – Central bankers, who once considered obscurity central to their craft, are trying to wean the world from the predictability they’ve nurtured over 15 years of concrete guidance about their intentions and return to a time when policy starts, stops and occasional surprises were more the norm. The endeavor is driven by recognition that renewed inflation may require higher […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s property sector is expected to grapple with “persistent weakness” for years, Goldman Sachs analysts said, adding that its problems would continue to drag on the country’s economic growth. Weaknesses are particularly pronounced in lower-tier cities and private developer financing, they said in a client note, adding that policymakers, who have vowed not to use the sector as a short-term lever to spur growth, seem keen for […]

(Reuters) -Entities backed by Singapore’s Temasek and Chinese investment firm HighLight Capital agreed to a deal worth 1.06 billion yuan ($148.7 million) for stakes in a unit of VIVA Biotech Holdings, the pharmaceutical service company said late on Sunday. The deal, which will dilute VIVA Biotech’s stake in VIVA Shanghai to about 75.79% from 100%, comes as the Chinese drug discovery and manufacturing service provider plans to restructure its businesses […]

By Florence Tan and Mohi Narayan (Reuters) -Oil prices declined on Monday ahead of a U.S. Federal Reserve meeting as investors tried to gauge the central bank’s appetite for further rate hikes, while concerns about China’s fuel demand growth and rising Russian crude supply weighed on the market. Brent crude futures fell 97 cents, or 1.3%, to $73.82 a barrel by 0437 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was […]