Philippine businesses seeking growth opportunities across Southeast Asia gained new momentum as telecommunications firm Globe Telecom expands its digital and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities amid the country"s push for deeper digital integration.

Beijing’s recent tightening of approvals for humanoid robot makers seeking initial public offerings (IPOs) poses no threat to companies with clear commercialisation strategies, as funding channels remain wide open for qualified players, according to Deloitte China. “Market funds are shifting from the ‘blind rush’ of the past to ‘fine screening’,” said Dick Kay, Deloitte China’s capital market services group national leader, at a press conference on Thursday. Investors and regulators now placed...

SoftBank Group has raised $11.1 billion in dollar- and euro-denominated bonds in the largest high-yield corporate bond sale globally on record as it seeks to fund its mammoth bet on OpenAI.

The Philippine information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industry expects revenues to grow faster than its workforce as companies increasingly turn to artificial intelligence (AI) to augment human workers, industry officials said Thursday.

As Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington for his much-anticipated summit with US President Donald Trump, it is clear which country emerged stronger from the tariff shock. Last month, China’s exports rose 25 per cent in annualised terms, causing the country’s trade surplus to swell to US$119 billion and putting it on track to exceed last year’s record of US$1.2 trillion. Moreover, China’s surplus with the US rose 44 per cent to US$29 billion, the widest gap since Trump returned to...

The sentiment among investors that China is a “single bet” is giving way to picking individual winners, with technology displacing property as the engine of growth, according to DBS Bank (Hong Kong). “Instead of looking at China as one big thing, there are selective sectors that we think will benefit from this trend,” Dennis Lam, managing director and head of research at the bank, said during a media briefing on Thursday. Artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and innovative drugs would...

DragonFi Securities Inc. has received regulatory approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to grant qualified Philippine-based investors access to pre-approved US equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

A three-day public holiday used to be a big deal in China. Then came “golden weeks”, which would sometimes stretch to nine days, sending millions of people in search of new sights across the country and further afield. Now an alignment of the Mid-Autumn Festival and the National Day holiday will give many Chinese students and office workers up to a record 13-day break, potentially pushing tourist traffic to new heights. “The more interesting change this year is not simply higher volume, but the...

China Asset Management (Hong Kong), the offshore arm of one of mainland China’s largest asset managers, launched three exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the city on Thursday, expanding its product line-up as investors seek more diversified strategies amid market volatility and a broader boom in the ETF market. The three products – a Hong Kong high-dividend ETF, a Hong Kong growth ETF and a Hong Kong-US “Halo” ETF – are scheduled to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange on September 30, with trading...

The planned initial public offering (IPO) of Mynt Inc., the parent company of GCash, has secured commitments from more than 20 global and domestic institutional investors.

With office vacancy rates in Kowloon East remaining high, the Planning Department has indicated it has “no objection” to a request by some developers for a commercial project in the area to be rezoned for residential development. A consortium comprising CSI Properties, Asia Standard International and Chongqing-born property tycoon Cheung Chung-kiu has submitted an application to the Town Planning Board to rezone Harbourside HQ – a grade A office building at 8 Lam Chak Street, Kowloon Bay, which...

Tencent Holdings on Thursday launched TenPayGo, a mobile payment app targeting foreign visitors, as the tech giant seeks to capture China’s growing inbound tourism market ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Shenzhen. Developed by Tencent’s WeChat Pay team, TenPayGo allowed international travellers to make payments at tens of millions of shops, restaurants and attractions across the WeChat Pay network by linking their credit cards or their home-country digital wallets...

Toyota Motor Philippines Corporation (TMP) has reinforced its strategic position in the regional automotive landscape after being designated by Toyota Motor Asia (TMA) as the official regional training hub for Body, Paint, and Estimation (BPE) instructors across Asian affiliates.

The commemorative coin for the Peñafrancia Festival is now available online, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced on Thursday.

Razon-led Primelectric Holdings Inc."s Bohol Light Company Inc. and More Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) have secured separate Senate nods for its congressional franchises.

The inadvertent disclosure of confidential information by a Morgan Stanley employee this week alarmed Hong Kong’s banking industry, listed issuers and regulators, according to several sources familiar with the matter. An email sent by the Hong Kong-based employee on Tuesday afternoon included an attached file with details on more than 100 deals in the pipeline, including initial public offerings (IPOs), private equity arrangements, pension fund positions and other projects in Greater China,...

Millet is being eyed as a substitute to corn feed for animals to lower livestock production cost, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said.

A more than 1,700 per cent share-price surge by a new listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange last week put a spotlight on a state-owned industrial compressor manufacturer, leading the bourse operator to intervene to curb speculative trading. ShenGu Group, a maker of centrifugal compressors in northeast China’s Liaoning province, grabbed headlines when its stock soared 1,216 per cent from its offer price two days after it began trading on September 17, with an intraday high on the second day of...

Thailand has announced the successful conclusion of negotiations for the ASEAN–Hong Kong Investment Agreement. This agreement will boost market access, create new investment opportunities in key industries, and strengthen business relations.

Five years after China pledged to stop building or financing new coal-fired power plants overseas, the country’s state sector has made “significant progress” towards meeting that goal, though private projects are still being developed, according to a new report. Two-thirds of China’s overseas coal power projects planned five years ago have since been cancelled, a 61.5-gigawatt (GW) cut in capacity that has saved 6.4 billion tonnes of “lifetime” carbon dioxide emissions, the study by a pair of...

The Thai government is actively negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the European Union, refuting claims that it has agreed to the UPOV 1991 convention, which purportedly infringes on farmers' rights to save seeds.

Foreign investors are starting to look again at mainland China’s commercial property market after years of retreat, drawn by sharply lower asset prices, wider yields and cheaper yuan financing, even though cross-border capital remains a small fraction of the overall market, analysts said. The shift did not yet amount to a broad return of foreign money, they added. Instead, some international investors were finding ways to participate through China’s domestic capital markets, using onshore...

Thailand & Asia | 24 September 2026 Thailand extends THB43 billion relief package as energy shock threatens household spending Thailand’s Cabinet has approved a THB43 billion extension of consumer and welfare support through November, using funds remaining from an existing borrowing programme rather than issuing new debt. The measures are designed to cushion households from […]

Hong Kong has climbed one place in a list of the world’s most transparent real estate markets by property consultancy JLL and subsidiary LaSalle Investment Management, though it still trails regional peers Singapore and Japan in the rankings. The city secured 14th place in the latest edition of the Global Real Estate Transparency Index, a report released every two years. The new report covers 146 city markets in 88 countries and territories worldwide. The ranking was the highest of any market in...

Crude oil prices resumed their uptrend and bond yields gained, while investors awaited a breakthrough in talks to end the Middle East conflict ahead of the high-stakes US-China summit.

Britain's media regulator Ofcom said it had opened an investigation into whether Pornhub has complied with its legal duties to prevent children from seeing pornography.

US President Donald Trump has sold shares worth tens of millions of US dollars in major tech companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms in July, a move that may reveal some of his views on the sector, especially as competition with China intensifies. Microsoft topped the list of sales transactions, with six trades totalling up to US$31 million, according to filings disclosed by the US Office of Government Ethics on Tuesday. The data detailed Trump’s trading activity in July,...

The US Treasury market is in trouble, oil prices have been surging and the yen might slide again. Whatever Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent might have said, the United States government isn’t big enough to be “the house” that always wins when it comes to fixing global markets. Last week, the 10-year US Treasury yield briefly reached 5.04 per cent, the highest level since 2007, right before the global financial crisis. Bessent had tripled a Treasury buy-back operation on September 10 to US$6...

Hong Kong’s securities regulator aims to include a yuan trading counter in a cross-border channel linked with mainland Chinese investors by July 1, marking the latest step in the city’s efforts to advance the internationalisation of the Chinese currency. The measure, announced on Wednesday, is part of a strategic action plan unveiled by the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) to support the implementation of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan and the 2026 policy address presented by Chief...

Nearly a metric ton of durian and mangosteen will be shipped to Canada as the Philippines seeks to open another potential market for its tropical fruits, the Department of Agriculture (DA) said on Wednesday.