Reuters Financial News

General Waker-uz-Zaman and his troops stood aside in early August amid raging student-led protests against Hasina, sealing the fate of the veteran politician who resigned after 15 years in power and fled to neighbouring India. In a rare media interview, Zaman told Reuters at his office on Monday that the interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had his full support and outlined a pathway to rid the military of political influence.

Hedge funds bought U.S. tech and media stocks at the fastest pace in four months last week, said a Goldman Sachs prime brokerage note to clients seen by Reuters on Monday, spurred by the Federal Reserve's anticipated 50-basis point rate cut. Falling rates are expected to rejuvenate industrial spending, making it easier for companies to borrow money at lower costs and for consumers to buy tech products, all of which might benefit the stock prices of these companies. The Fed's first rate cut in four years lifted U.S. stocks last week, with the S&P 500 index closing Friday 1.15% higher, as recession fears ebbed and investors digested the implications of easing monetary policy.

TSMC and Samsung Electronics, have discussed building potential chip projects in the United Arab Emirates in coming years which could be worth more than $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Top executives at TSMC have visited the UAE recently and talked about a plant complex on par with some of the company's largest and most advanced facilities in Taiwan, the WSJ said, citing people familiar with the interactions. South Korea-based Samsung Electronics, a maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips, is also considering major new chip-making operations in the country in the years ahead, the paper said.

Check out what's clicking on FoxBusiness.com.

Enfusion, a U.S. software provider for asset managers, is in talks with investment bankers to evaluate options that could include a potential sale, according to people familiar with the matter. The Chicago-based company, which has a market value of $1.1 billion, decided to interview investment banks in recent weeks after receiving takeover interest from potential suitors including private equity firms, one of the sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is confidential. Enfusion has not launched a sale process yet and it is possible that the company opts to stay independent, the sources added. Enfusion did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Indian power companies are being hampered by its inability to access the dollars it requires to pay them, documents showed and sources familiar with the matter said. The country has been struggling to pay its bills due to costly fuel and goods imports since the 2022 war in Ukraine, while political turmoil which led to the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August has added to its troubles. Bangladesh is urgently seeking $5 billion in financial aid from international lenders to stabilise its dwindling foreign exchange reserves and its central bank has raised key interest rates to tame soaring inflation. Last year, it sought a $4.7 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

Novo Nordisk fell more than 4% on Friday to their lowest level since Aug. 10 after the Danish drugmaker reported results from a Phase 2a trial of its experimental obesity pill monlunabant that came in below market expectations. Shares were down 4.3% at 1330 GMT, the lowest since August 8, after the company announced headline results from its trial of monlunabant, an experimental drug it acquired as part of its $1 billion purchase of Canadian biotech company Inversago Pharmaceuticals last year.

Telegram just weeks after the Telegram Founder was accused of allowing the messenger app to facilitate crime, news agency Reuters reported on Friday, September 20.The alleged creator of the chatbots told a security researcher, who alerted the agency of the development. According to the report, the private details of millions of people were for sale, and samples could be viewed by asking the bots to disclose them.Star Health and Allied Insurance told Reuters in a statement that the company reported alleged unauthorized data access to local authorities.

SpaceX, billionaire Elon Musk's space venture, to buy two brick ranch houses she owns near the mouth of the Rio Grande. The properties are nestled amid the South Texas scrubland where SpaceX established an ever-expanding facility for the production and launch of its rockets. For decades, they've served as a home for the former social worker and a source of retirement income from beachgoers who once rented one of the houses, a short walk from the Gulf of Mexico. SpaceX's breakneck development, and fast-changing local regulations that facilitated it, disrupted her quiet retirement and halted much of the beach traffic. It also raised her property taxes, inflated by soaring values all around her as neighbors sold land to SpaceX.

Samsung Electronics has warned its striking workers in southern India they will not receive wages if they continue protesting and also face the risk of termination, a company email showed, escalating a dispute between the company and its employees. Hundreds of Samsung workers have since Sept. 9 disrupted work and protested in a nearby makeshift tent close to its home appliances factory near the city of Chennai. They have been demanding higher wages and recognition of a union at the plant, which contributes roughly a third of Samsung's annual India revenue of $12 billion. Samsung last week sued the protesting union in a district court, seeking a temporary injunction to restrain sloganeering and making speeches in and around the factory. But the judge on Thursday only called for a swift resolution.

China unexpectedly left benchmark lending rates unchanged at the monthly fixing on Friday, confounding market expectations that were primed for a move after the Federal Reserve delivered an outsized interest rate cut earlier this week. However, market watchers widely believe further stimulus will be rolled out to prop up an ailing economy, as the Fed's easing offers Beijing leeway to loosen monetary policy without unduly hurting the yuan. The one-year loan prime rate (LPR) was kept at 3.35%, while the five-year LPR was unchanged at 3.85%.

Disney plans to transition away from its use of Slack as a companywide workplace collaboration system, after a hacking entity leaked online more than a terabyte of company data, according to a report in the Status media newsletter. Disney's CFO Hugh Johnston said most of the media and entertainment company's businesses would stop using the service later this year, the report said. Many teams have already started transitioning to streamlined enterprise-wide collaboration tools, according to the report.

India on Thursday described as «inaccurate» a media report that said artillery shells sold by Indian arms manufacturers have been diverted by European customers to Ukraine and New Delhi has not intervened to stop it. «We have seen the Reuters report. It is speculative and misleading. It implies violations by India, where none exist and hence, is inaccurate and mischievous,» Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. He said India has an «impeccable» track record of compliance with international obligations on the export of military and dual-use items. «India has been carrying out its defence exports taking into account its international obligations on non-proliferation and based on its own robust legal and regulatory framework, which includes a holistic assessment of relevant criteria, including end-user obligations and certifications,» Jaiswal said.

HDFC Bank hopes to complete a planned sale of loans worth more than Rs 90 billion ($1.08 billion) — its largest to date — by the end of September, three sources aware of the matter said on Thursday. The sources requested anonymity as they are not authorised to speak to media. HDFC Bank did not immediately reply to a Reuters query.

Coal India is scouting for critical minerals in Argentina and is in talks with officials in Chile for lithium, India's federal mines secretary V. L. Kantha Rao said on Wednesday. India has been exploring ways to secure supplies of lithium, a critical raw material used to make electric vehicle batteries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government last year listed 30 minerals, including lithium, nickel, titanium, vanadium and tungsten, as critical to drive the adoption of clean energy.

Taiwan's Gold Apollo did not make the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday, the company's founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters on Wednesday. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday. Images of destroyed pagers analysed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from the Taiwan-based Gold Apollo.

Israel's Mossad spy agency planted a small amount of explosives inside 5,000 Taiwan-made pagers ordered by Lebanese group Hezbollah months before Tuesday's detonations, a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters. The operation was an unprecedented Hezbollah security breach that saw thousands of pagers detonate across Lebanon, killing nine people and wounding nearly 3,000 others, including the group's fighters and Iran's envoy to Beirut. Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel, whose military declined to comment on the blasts.

Hindalco Industries plans to start solar modules manufacturing and set up a plant in the western state of Gujarat, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. The company, owned by cement to fashion retail conglomerate Aditya Birla Group, is evaluating a five-year plan in the competitive sector, one of the sources said. Hindalco has identified land in port town Mundra in Gujarat, the second person said.

U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was seen as a liability by some soldiers and volunteers in Ukraine, where he offered to recruit Afghans into the Ukrainian military, a former soldier told Reuters on Tuesday. Ryan Routh, 58, who was arrested about 40 minutes after the incident on Sunday at one of the former president's Florida golf courses, publicly backed Ukraine and spent time in Kyiv after Russia launched its invasion in 2022. «He was delusional… he had this idea that he was the only one who knew how to help Ukraine,» Evelyn Aschenbrenner, a former soldier in Ukraine's International Legion, told Reuters via Zoom from Lviv.

Zimbabwe, facing the worst drought in four decades, is set to cull 200 elephants to help feed its people, according to wildlife authorities. This decision follows a similar plan by neighbouring Namibia, which announced earlier this month that it would cull 160 wildlife animals, including 83 elephants, due to the severe drought affecting its population. The El Niño-induced drought has devastated southern Africa, leading both Zimbabwe and Namibia to declare states of emergency. The drought has directly impacted 68 million people in the region, resulting in severe food shortages and dire conditions. Tinashe Farawo, spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (Zimparks), told Reuters, “We can confirm that we are planning to cull about 200 elephants across the country. We are working on the details of how this will be carried out.” Farawo also confirmed that the elephant meat will be distributed to communities in Zimbabwe affected by the drought.

Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks from its platforms, claiming the outlets had used deceptive tactics to carry out covert influence operations online. «After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,» the social media company said in a written statement. Enforcement of the ban would roll out over the coming days, it said. In addition to Facebook, Meta's apps include Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.