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The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) is pressing ahead with the relaunch of gold futures as mainland China's appetite for the metal continues to grow. The city would continue to introduce new gold products and facilities to capture the growing opportunities of the gold market, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Thursday at the LME Asia Metals Seminar 2026 in Hong Kong. The HKEX planned to relaunch gold futures in coming months and seek market feedback to refine the products,......

Chinese technology billionaire Chen Tianqiao's artificial intelligence start-up MiroMind is suspending its services in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, in the latest sign that some of the country's most globally ambitious firms are increasingly retreating from the domestic market as geopolitical tensions reshape the industry following the Manus saga. In an email sent to select users on Wednesday, the company said that its MiroThinker services would stop operating in regions including......

With US equities regaining momentum amid easing tensions in the Middle East, questions are being raised as to whether global capital is rotating back into the world's largest market. Investment advisers and fund managers said global investors were reassessing their asset allocations, though there was little evidence of a broad capital rotation away from Asia. While market performance suggested some reallocation, flow data remained inconclusive and did not point to a decisive shift away from......

Buying interest is returning to Hong Kong's secondary luxury housing market as wealthy families hunt for value in projects where prices have lagged behind the broader residential recovery despite improving sentiment and lower interest rates. Among the latest buyers, members of the family behind knitwear manufacturer Nameson Holdings acquired adjoining units at Mayfair By The Sea I in Tai Po for HK$60 million (US$7.7 million) combined, according to Land Registry filings. The buyer was listed as......

The majority shareholder of Shenzhen-listed Wuliangye Yibin (Wuliangye) – China's iconic premium baijiu producer – plans to increase its equity stake in the listed unit by purchasing between 3 billion yuan (US$441 million) and 5 billion yuan worth of shares over the next six months, in a move aimed at bolstering investor confidence after the stock slid to a six-year low. Analysts said the stake increase followed a prolonged downturn in China's baijiu sector and growing unease among investors......

Chinese artificial intelligence start-up Moonshot AI has raised about US$2 billion in a new funding round, boosting its valuation to more than US$20 billion as it navigates Beijing's new listing rules for companies registered overseas. The funding was led by Meituan and involved China Mobile. Over the past six months, Moonshot had raised a total of US$3.9 billion, according to a statement by the deal's financial adviser HF Capital on Thursday. The Beijing-based company, best known for its Kimi......

TikTok is investing US$25 billion in data infrastructure projects in Thailand, the company's biggest investment announced to date in Southeast Asia, as China's technology giants continue expanding their footprint in the region. The investment would be used to install additional servers and expand data storage and processing infrastructure across Bangkok, Samut Prakan and Chachoengsao provinces to support rising demand for digital services, according to an announcement by Thailand's Board of......

China's central bank has set the yuan's exchange rate at its strongest level against the US dollar in more than three years, as Beijing pushes to internationalise its currency and global confidence in US dollar assets continues to waver. The People's Bank of China set the yuan's midpoint rate at 6.8487 per US dollar on Thursday, the strongest level since April 2023. The fixing rate, used as a reference for daily market trading, was 6.8562 a day earlier. Analysts expect the Chinese currency to......

Hong Kong is exploring the creation of a specialised mediation panel to handle international commodities disputes, as the city steps up efforts to position itself as a regional hub for metals trading, yuan-denominated commodities products and physical gold storage, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said on Thursday. The proposed panel would focus on resolving disputes across the commodities supply chain – from mining and production to trading, warehousing and delivery – and would be developed......

Midea Group plans to raise HK$17.2 billion (US$2.2 billion) from selling convertible bonds, as China's biggest household appliances maker taps the debt market to expand its overseas business. The Guangdong province-based company would sell the bonds in two tranches at an amount of HK$8.62 billion for each, with the first one maturing in May 2027 and the second one due in May 2033, Midea said in a statement to the Hong Kong exchange on Thursday. The bonds have zero coupon rates and do not bear......

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it would end sales of all home appliance products in mainland China, retreating further from a consumer market increasingly dominated by domestic rivals as the group doubles down on its far more profitable semiconductor business. Samsung's home appliance portfolio in China includes televisions, monitors, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, vacuum cleaners and air purifiers. In a notice published on its official......

Hong Kong stocks jumped on Thursday, led by technology shares, as easing tensions in the Middle East and a drop in oil prices boosted sentiment after overnight gains on Wall Street. The benchmark Hang Seng Index opened 1.2 per cent, or 317 points, higher at 26,531, recovering the 26,500 level, while the Hang Seng Tech Index gained 2.4 per cent to 5,089. Tech heavyweights led gains, with Alibaba Group Holding rising nearly 4 per cent and Baidu advancing almost 5 per cent. Oil producers fell as......

Chloe Wang, a 26-year-old fund employee in Shenzhen, said she “definitely wouldn't” pay for a subscription to Doubao, Chinese tech giant ByteDance's artificial intelligence chatbot, at its proposed price. “I'm willing to pay for AI tools, but I don't think it's worth that much – even though I find Doubao relatively easy to use among domestic AI products,” said Wang, who uses the app occasionally for work-related queries. “If I had to pay for an AI tool as a productivity aid, I'd probably rather......

Profit trajectories between automotive assemblers and electric vehicle (EV) battery producers in China are set to diverge further due to lacklustre car sales and buoyant demand for energy-storage systems. Leading players, including China's EV battery king Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL), would continue to attract buying interest in their shares, spurred by improved profitability, according to analysts. They added that flat vehicle prices, coupled with a dip in new car sales, had......

While the world's largest memory-chip makers are reaping record profits from the artificial intelligence boom, traders in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei electronics market are being left to deal with the fallout of a speculative frenzy that has sharply reversed, wiping out much of the value of their inventories since late 2025. “The market surge last year became so frantic that everyone from shoemakers to fishmongers piled into memory-chip speculation,” a trader surnamed Liu said from his cramped stall......

The release of DeepSeek's latest large language model, V4, has been followed by a wave of adoption among domestic semiconductor manufacturers and artificial intelligence chipmakers, with firms racing to support the model on local hardware platforms. The shift comes amid rising geopolitical tensions over advanced semiconductors. Here are some of the key players enabling the model's deployment on domestic hardware. Huawei Huawei Technologies was among the first to act, with the V4 fully adapted to......

China-made humanoid robots are beginning to gain traction in Japan, with models from Chinese firms Unitree and UBTech being deployed by Japan Airlines for baggage and cargo handling, highlighting the growing adoption of Chinese robotics technology as Japan grapples with acute labour shortages. Japan Airlines said last week that it would launch a two-year trial using humanoid robots for ground-handling operations at Tokyo's Haneda Airport through a partnership with GMO AI & Robotics. Tasks in the......

The competition could intensify at tenders for Hong Kong's residential plots as developers replenish their land banks amid a recovering property market, with the tug of war testing their financial discipline as they bid for parcels at a “noticeable premium”, according to S&P Global Ratings, though some analysts believe that the return of confidence is warranted given robust demand for housing units. The credit-rating agency also forecast a relatively modest residential market recovery, which......

Companies listed in mainland China have reached a historic milestone in their global operations. Total overseas revenues hit a record, with electronic and automobile giants such as Foxconn Technology Group and BYD among the top performers. Total overseas revenues of A-share companies approached 12.4 trillion yuan (US$1.8 trillion) last year, accounting for nearly 17 per cent of their total income – both figures representing all-time highs, according to data from state-backed newspaper Securities......

CK Hutchison Holdings' disposal of its investment in UK's biggest mobile phone operator has spurred speculation that the Li Ka-shing family-controlled conglomerate may channel part of the investment gain into dividends for shareholders. The sale of its 49 per cent stake in VodafoneThree would fetch a net gain of HK$4.7 billion (US$600 million), and if CK Hutchison reserved 40 per cent of the proceeds for payouts – as it has done on similar occasions – it would boost dividends by HK$0.50 per......