Hong Kong Financial News

BYD has reported impressive growth for 2024, surpassing Tesla in revenue. The company earned 777.1 billion yuan ($107.2 billion), significantly higher than Tesla's previously reported revenue of $97.7 billion. BYD also posted a net profit of 40.3 billion yuan, a 34% increase from 2023, marking a record high. In January, the company revealed that it sold nearly 4.3 million vehicles last year, a 40% increase over the previous year. The Chinese company’s strong results come at a time when Tesla is struggling, with a 71% drop in net income for the fourth quarter of 2024. Tesla's profits fell to $2.32 billion, down from $7.93 billion, as reported by CNBC in late January.

Asian stocks rose early Tuesday after US equities enjoyed one of their best sessions of the year, fueled by signs that President Donald Trump’s trade sanctions will be narrower than feared. Indexes in Australia and Japan advanced after Wall Street’s risk-on bid lifted shares of nearly all stripes in a rebound from a sharp selloff that has challenged the notion of US exceptionalism. The Nasdaq 100 added 2.2%. Hong Kong stocks were poised to drop at the open. Treasuries were little changed in Asian trading following a nine basis point climb in the 10-year yield to 4.33% on Monday.

foreign selling. The rebound on the heels of a prolonged period of gloom has helped the main indices erase all their 2025 losses. The rupee advanced to 85.63, its strongest this year against the dollar, rising for the ninth day in a row. The NSE Nifty rose 307.95 points or 1.32% to close at 23,658.35. The BSE Sensex rose 1,078.87 points or 1.4% to end at 77,984.38. Both indices are up 5.1% in the six trading sessions. «Monday's upside was due to a combination of short covering, and expectations of some relaxation or less punitive tariffs which were supposed to be implemented on April 2,» said Pankaj Pandey, head of retail research at ICICI Direct.

Novo Nordisk A/S agreed to pay United Laboratories International Holdings as much as $2 billion for a next-generation obesity drug, the Danish Ozempic maker's latest move to refill its pipeline of experimental treatments. Novo will pay Hong Kong-based United Laboratories $200 million upfront for the drug, which combines three different mechanisms in an effort to treat obesity as well as diabetes and other diseases, the companies said Monday. Novo agreed to pay as much as $1.8 billion if the drug reaches certain development and sales goals. The deal comes amid growing skepticism from investors that Novo's next-generation portfolio will be sufficient to keep it on top of the hypercompetitive market for weight loss treatments. German software developer SAP SE unseated Novo as Europe's most valuable public company on Monday. Novo's shares traded down as much as 3.1% in Copenhagen. United Laboratories will retain rights in China for its compound, which works in a similar way to Novo rival Eli Lilly & Co.'s retatrutide — considered the strongest among the next-generation drugs currently in late-stage human trials.

Xiaomi Corp kicked off a share sale that may fetch as much as $5.3 billion, capitalising on a surge in the Chinese company's stock price to help raise funds to expand its electric-vehicle business. The Beijing-based company is offering 750 million shares at HK$52.80-54.60 apiece, according to terms of the deal. That's a discount of 4.2% to 7.4% versus the stock's last close in Hong Kong. Investor demand met the size of the offering by Monday evening, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because they're not authorised to speak publicly about the matter. The offering, which comes weeks after EV giant BYD Co's $5.6-billion fundraising, builds on what's shaping up to be a bumper year for share sales in Hong Kong. After years of slumping, the city's benchmark stock index is among the world's best performers this year, fuelling optimism for a rebound in deals in the Asian financial hub.

GJEPC) officials said. China's economic slowdown coupled with plunging marriage rates in the country created a chilling effect in the Chinese diamond market valued at around USD nine billion. Last year, China's diamond market generated about USD 5.7 billion in revenue, and is expected to grow to USD 7.2 billion by 2030, according to market analysts. The demand for diamonds has fallen by as much as 50 per cent in China, while wholesale diamond prices have fallen by about 40 per cent over the past two years, creating a major downturn in the global diamond industry especially that of India as it accounted for a third of India's cut and polished diamond exports.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Sassoon Docks, tucked away in the bustling heart of South Mumbai’s Colaba, is a living testament to the city’s maritime soul. Just a stone’s throw from the Gateway of India, it is more than a mere port—it is the fish-scented, beating heart of Mumbai, where history, hustle, and heritage converge in an unforgettable sensory symphony.

Chinese equities this week — the largest weekly inflow since October 2024 — as blockbuster rallies in electric vehicle giant BYD and Chinese AI firms reignited confidence in China’s market rebound, driving global fund managers to ramp up their bets on Asia’s biggest economy.

The NSE Nifty surged 325.55 points, or 1.45%, to close at 22,834.30. The BSE Sensex rose 1131.31 points, or 1.53%, to end at 75,301.26. Both indices have risen about 2% in the last two days.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. UBS said it will start the most complex part of its Credit Suisse integration in the coming months, as the banking giant deals with uncertainty amid global trade tensions and Swiss proposals to tighten capital rules. The Swiss banking group will begin the migration of former Credit Suisse client accounts in Switzerland to the UBS platform in the second quarter, it said in its annual report published Monday.

market’s recent decline as healthy. Stocks rose in Australia, Japan and South Korea in early Monday trade, with futures in Hong Kong also pointing to a higher open. The gains came after the S&P 500 jumped 2.1% Friday as the government avoided a shutdown, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 advanced 2.1%. The Golden Dragon index rose 2.7% with Chinese authorities set to announce measures to boost consumption on Monday. The dollar was steady.

Donald Trump's wide-ranging trade war rouses fears of recession, global investors have found an unlikely new sanctuary: Chinese equities. Hong Kong's benchmark Hang Seng Index — where many major Chinese companies are listed — is up 17 since Trump entered the White House in January. That compares to an about 9 per cent drop in the S&P 500, which has also shed $4 trillion in market value from record highs last month, Reuters reported. Trump's erratic pronouncement on tariffs and moves to slash federal government spending have challenged assumptions about the appeal of U.S.

A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored a February Japan-U.S. statement in condemning «coercion» toward Taiwan, language that heartened Taipei in its increasingly tense standoffs with Beijing. Compared to a G7 foreign ministers' statement in November, the statement added members' concerns over China's nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing's human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for «constructive and stable relations with China» and recognizing the «importance of direct and candid engagement to express concerns and manage differences.» The statement dropped past reassurances, recently stated in November, that there is «no change in the basic position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including stated One-China policies,» as well as that the G7 is «not decoupling or turning inwards» and recognizing the importance of China in global trade.

US equity-index futures climbed Friday as signs the US will avoid a government shutdown injected a boost to sentiment. Shares in Japan retraced early losses while those in Australia also climbed higher along with indexes in Hong Kong. Futures contracts for US equities advanced early Friday as a stopgap funding bill looked set to pass and avoid a US government shutdown. The S&P 500 dropped 1.4% on Thursday to a six-month low, bringing its three-week rout past 10% — a correction in trader parlance. The Nasdaq 100, also in a correction, fell 1.9%.

Asian equities rose Thursday after cooler-than-forecast US inflation helped Wall Street rebound from two days of heavy losses. Australian and Japanese shares rose and equity-index futures for US stocks climbed in early Asian trading, bolstering advances in the prior session. Even after Wednesday’s gains for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, the first since Friday for the US benchmarks, they both remained over 3% lower this week. Hong Kong equity futures fell, tracking declines in an index of US-listed Chinese companies on Wednesday.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Want to celebrate Holi in Varanasi or spend Eid unwinding in the Maldives? Be ready to pay up. With Holi falling on 14 March (Friday) and Eid expected on 31 March (Monday), travellers are seizing the back-to-back long weekends, sending hotel rates soaring.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Whether John Maynard Keynes said, “When the facts change, I change my mind" is often disputed, but the witticism has never seemed more apt. German chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz, long a fiscal hawk as the leader of Germany’s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), recently made an about-turn on the virtues of higher deficit spending after being briefed on the country’s dwindling growth prospects and witnessing geopolitical gyrations in the US, which seems keen to patch up with Russia, potentially leaving its European allies in the lurch.

BEIJING — Mainland Chinese investors are piling into the Hong Kong stock market at record volumes as its tech-heavy Hang Seng Index trades around three-year highs.

Rodrigo Duterte said in Hong Kong that he was ready for possible arrest amid reports the International Criminal Court (ICC) was poised to issue a warrant over his years-long «war on drugs» that killed thousands. The «war on drugs» was the signature campaign policy that swept Duterte to power in 2016 as a maverick, crime-busting mayor, who delivered on promises he made during vitriolic speeches to kill thousands of narcotics dealers. The office of the current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said on Monday no official communication had been received from Interpol yet, but indicated Duterte could be handed over.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Imagine a literary festival not as encounters with favourite authors or listening to fascinating debates but instead as embarrassing onstage debacles, serialised episodes of misadventures that metamorphose in the mind into a very public pillorying. With this season’s calendar of lit fests, in locations as diverse as Jaipur and Thimphu, coming to an end, my bizarre experiences at Sri Lanka’s Galle Literary Festival last month reminded me of my accident-prone run on stage.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Bulls bounded back into the reckoning on Wednesday after 10 long days of decline, shored up by comebacks from auto, IT and FMCG stocks, and a fall in the value of the US dollar to a three-month low. The recovery ended the longest losing streak witnessed by benchmark Nifty 50, its worst in more than 25 years.