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Homebuyers continued to signal confidence in Hong Kong's residential market on Saturday, with about three quarters of 248 new flats put up for sale snapped up by late afternoon. A total of 53 out of 88 units were sold at The Pavilia Farm III, while 129 of 160 units at KT Marina II in Kai Tak were taken as of 4.30pm, according to Midland Realty. The Pavilia Farm III, a project jointly developed by New World Development (NWD) and MTR Corp atop Tai Wai Station in Sha Tin, saw buyers throng the......

Huawei Technologies claimed the top spot in China's smartphone market in the first quarter with its highest share in five years, while Apple saw the strongest growth among the top six players, despite a global memory chip crunch. Huawei held a 20 per cent share in the first three months, the highest since the fourth quarter of 2020, according to a Friday report by Counterpoint Research. Chinese government subsidies that offered a 15 per cent discount for gadgets under 6,000 yuan (US$880), along......

The US-Israeli war on Iran has unleashed sharp swings across global energy and financial markets, fuelling demand for safe-haven assets, with Hong Kong emerging as a potential beneficiary across gold, property and capital markets. In the first of a three-part series, we examine Hong Kong's bid to position itself as Asia's bullion hub. War in the Middle East has intensified global demand to diversify gold storage, creating a strategic window for Hong Kong to tap its unique status and evolve from......

A quarter featuring multiple eye-popping deals is no longer unusual for China's pharmaceutical industry – in fact, it may soon be considered a slow season. In recent months, companies including CSPC Pharmaceutical and RemeGen have struck out-licensing agreements worth up to US$18.5 billion and US$5.6 billion respectively, while Haisco Pharmaceutical Group has added two of its own — most recently a deal worth up to US$745 million. Under the terms of the deal, the Beijing-based Haisco granted US......

Hong Kong is better placed than many of its Asian peers to turn stablecoins into commercially viable products at scale, underpinned by its early lead in tokenisation and growing experience in moving financial infrastructure on-chain, according to HSBC's head of digital assets research. “Hong Kong already has examples of deploying the technology and can now look towards commercial applications and scaling,” said Daragh Maher, HSBC's head of digital assets research, in an interview on the......

As China's artificial intelligence sector accelerates, competition for top talent has intensified among major tech companies, with firms increasingly poaching from rivals while also attracting researchers from overseas hubs such as Silicon Valley. A reported high-profile personnel move involving DeepSeek researcher Guo Daya recently drew attention to the sensitivity surrounding AI hiring in China's tech sector. Guo, a lead researcher on DeepSeek's R1 model, joined ByteDance's Seed AI development......

The Trump administration and Anthropic's CEO on Friday discussed working together for the first time since a dispute earlier this year between the Pentagon and the artificial intelligence firm over how that company's models should be used. The meeting between CEO Dario Amodei and White House staff, which took place amid growing ‌fears the AI start-up's latest model will supercharge cyberattacks, suggests the two sides might be on a path to rebuilding trust. The Trump administration, central......

China's leading LED chipmaker and its Malaysian partner have abandoned their US$239 million cash offer to purchase Dutch technology company Lumileds Holding after opposition from US authorities, marking the latest setback for Chinese tech investment overseas following the high-profile Nexperia saga. Sanan Optoelectronics, listed in Shanghai, said in a disclosure announcement on Friday that despite multiple rounds of discussions, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)......

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) has proposed halving the cash settlement cycle for share trading as part of efforts to enhance market efficiency and liquidity. The city's bourse operator said in a consultation paper on Friday that it aimed to implement a “T+1” system – under which trades are settled one day after the transaction – in the fourth quarter of 2027, replacing the existing “T+2” cycle. If adopted, the shortened cycle would apply to equities, exchange-traded products,......

For pet food container seller Chen Junbin, customs used to be a major bottleneck when shipping from Shenzhen in southern China to his customers in the US. “In the past, we had to handle all the paperwork and coordinate with multiple logistics suppliers ourselves; a single [customs] inspection could delay our shipment by a week,” said Chen, founder of Shenzhen Lightning Technology. As one of the first sellers to test Amazon's Global Warehousing and Distribution (GWD) facility, the US giant's new......

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on a recent podcast that if Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek optimised its new models on chips from Huawei Technologies, it would be “a horrible outcome” for the US. If “future AI models are optimised in a very different way than the American tech stack”, and as “AI diffuses out into the rest of the world” with Chinese standards and technology, China “will become superior to” the US, Huang said on the Dwarkesh Podcast on Wednesday. The conversation......

A 32-year-old investor in central Hunan never expected a routine phone call about stock tips would leave him nursing heavy losses. In a post on RedNote, he said a caller claiming ties to private equity firms offered daily stock recommendations, urging him to buy within fixed quotas in exchange for sharing half the profits. “It was sketchy – I'm now trapped in the market and down almost 20 per cent,” he said on Thursday. His experience reflects a broader surge in scams targeting retail investors,......

Chinese billionaire investor Duan Yongping touted Pop Mart International Group as a long-term investment and hinted that he may have already started building bullish bets, further validating his confidence in companies that are grappling with growth concerns. Duan, dubbed China's Warren Buffett by some investors, recently said on social media that the toymaker had great growth potential to achieve its globalisation goal and that the barriers built by the company were enough to fend off......

China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) has levied more than 3.6 billion yuan (US$527.3 million) in fines on seven e-commerce platforms following an investigation, the administration revealed on Friday. More to follow ......

SenseTime Group plans to raise HK$3.25 billion (US$415.2 million) through a share placement to fund investments in advanced artificial intelligence, joining a wave of companies tapping Hong Kong's equity market amid improving sentiment. The Chinese AI company planned to sell 1.7 billion shares at HK$1.9 each, representing an 8.6 per cent discount to Thursday's closing price, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday. The new shares will account for about 4.04 per cent of its......

Manycore Tech, a design software developer hailed as one of Hangzhou's “Six Little Dragons”, made its trading debut in Hong Kong on Friday, with shares rising 172 per cent at the open, as the company positions itself at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the physical world. The company's shares opened at HK$20.70 (US$2.64), rising 172 per cent versus the offer price of HK$7.62. The firm raised HK$1.09 billion from its initial public offering (IPO). On the grey market on Thursday,......

In China's hyper-competitive and lucrative tech industry, releasing cutting-edge artificial intelligence models for free may seem counter-intuitive – but it has become a core business strategy. At the University of Hong Kong last November, Alibaba Group Holding chairman Joe Tsai was asked why the tech giant open-sourced its AI models. Addressing a room full of students, Tsai said he believed open-source AI would bring global benefits by lowering costs, making it a natural fit for talent- and......

One in every six Asia-Pacific companies would face credit pressure from a prolonged energy shock arising from the Middle East conflict, as they deal with higher costs from rising oil prices and supply disruptions, according to S&P Global Ratings. Companies in the fields of downstream oil and gas, aviation, automotive, engineering and construction, and building materials would bear the brunt of the pain brought on by the war that has already sent crude prices up more than 30 per cent since the......

At a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill on Thursday, lawmakers and experts accused China of buying “what they can” and stealing “what they cannot” in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race, while warning the United States' immigration and research policies could be hindering innovation necessary to stay ahead. “The pattern is clear. China is dependent on our tech stack to continue their AI development. China is willing to buy what they can, and steal what they cannot, to advance their......

Ganfeng Lithium, the world's largest producer of lithium metal, has issued a strong profit forecast for the first quarter of this year as soaring demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage system (ESS) batteries lifted earnings. The company, based in China's central Jiangxi province, said in an exchange filing on Thursday that increasing orders had driven up prices of lithium – a key material for EV and ESS batteries – helping it post an estimated profit of 1.6 billion yuan (US$234......