#hong kong offshore companies

[bsw-company-formation-in-uae]

Hong Kong is best location for offshore company formation. It offers various benefits like lower tax rates, flexibility of business structure and many more. Business Setup Worldwide can help you to set your offshore business in hong kong.

[siliconpalms]

Creating an offshore company can offer various benefits like privacy, tax optimization, and easier international operations. However, it’s crucial to choose the right jurisdiction based on your specific needs, as each has its own set of rules, costs, and advantages. Here are ten notable jurisdictions for incorporating an offshore company, along with approximate costs, yearly fees, taxes, and…

[eurofinanzza]

Offshore Company Hong Kong

Are you planning for Offshore Company Hong Kong? Hong Kong is classified as a SAR (Special Administrative Region) within the Republic of China and has retained its legal system. The legal system in Hong Kong is, based on the British system with the official languages being English and Chinese. Hong Kong offshore companies gain from the jurisdiction not being on the list of global tax havens, thereby avoiding potential difficulty from authorities.

[trustednewstribune]

4 Dead, 60 Injured As "Strongest Earthquake In 25 Years" Hits Taiwan

At least four people were killed and nearly 60 injured Wednesday by a powerful earthquake in Taiwan that damaged dozens of buildings and prompted tsunami warnings that extended to Japan and the Philippines before being lifted.

Officials said the quake was the strongest to shake the island in decades, and warned of more tremors in the days ahead.

"The earthquake is close to land and it's shallow. It's felt all over Taiwan and offshore islands," said Wu Chien-fu, director of Taipei's Central Weather Administration's Seismology Center.

Strict building regulations and disaster awareness appear to have staved off a major catastrophe for the island, which is regularly hit by earthquakes as it lies near the junction of two tectonic plates.

Wu said the quake was the strongest since a 7.6-magnitude struck in September 1999, killing around 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island's history.

Wednesday's magnitude-7.4 quake struck just before 8:00 am local time (0000 GMT), with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) putting the epicentre 18 kilometres (11 miles) south of Taiwan's Hualien City, at a depth of 34.8 kilometres.

Three people among a group of seven on an early-morning hike through the hills that surround the city were crushed to death by boulders loosened by the earthquake, officials said.

Separately, a truck driver died when his vehicle was hit by a landslide as it approached a tunnel in the area.

Social media was awash with shared video and images from around the country of buildings swaying as the quake struck.

"I wanted to run out, but I wasn't dressed. That was so strong," said Kelvin Hwang, a guest at a hotel in the capital, Taipei, who sought shelter in the lift lobby on the ninth floor.

Dramatic images were shown on local TV of multi-storey structures in Hualien and elsewhere tilting after it ended, while a warehouse in New Taipei City crumbled.

Local TV channels showed bulldozers clearing rocks along roads to Hualien, a mountain-ringed coastal city of around 100,000 people that was cut off by landslides.

President Tsai Ing-wen called for local and central government agencies to coordinate with each other, and said that the national army would also be providing support.

The National Fire Agency confirmed the death toll, adding nearly 60 people had been treated for quake-related injuries.

Regional impact - In Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines, authorities initially issued a tsunami warning but by around 10 am (0200 GMT), the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the threat had "largely passed".

In the capital, the metro briefly stopped running but resumed within an hour, while residents received warnings from their local borough chiefs to check for any gas leaks.

Taiwan is regularly hit by earthquakes as the island lies near the junction of two tectonic plates, while nearby Japan experiences around 1,500 jolts every year.

Across the Taiwan Strait, social media users in China's eastern Fujian province, which borders Guangdong in the south, and elsewhere said they also felt strong tremors.

Residents of Hong Kong also reported feeling the earthquake.

China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan as a renegade province, was "paying close attention" to the quake and "willing to provide disaster relief assistance", state news agency Xinhua said.

Fabrication at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company -- the world's biggest chip maker -- was briefly interrupted at some plants, a company official told AFP, while work at construction sites for new plants was halted for the day.

The vast majority of quakes around the area are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to the depth of the epicentre below the Earth's surface and its location.

The severity of tsunamis -- vast and potentially destructive series of waves that can move at hundreds of kilometres per hour -- also depends on multiple factors.

Japan's biggest earthquake on record was a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea jolt in March 2011 off Japan's northeast coast, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.

The 2011 catastrophe also sent three reactors into meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, causing Japan's worst post-war disaster and the most serious nuclear accident since Chernobyl.

Japan saw a major quake on New Year's Day this year, when a 7.5-magnitude tremor hit the Noto Peninsula and killed more than 230 people, many of them when older buildings collapsed.

[argumate]

Over the course of the negotiations, Evergrande representatives would sometimes refer to “Guangzhou” (the capital of Guangdong province) as responsible for vetting virtually all key decisions, yet it remained unclear to creditors which combination of entities or individuals they were alluding to.

The secretive yet omnipresent group never directly interacted with those involved in offshore debt talks, said the people familiar. Their views were relayed to the company’s financial advisers, China International Capital Corp. and Bank of China International Holdings, which would then pass information on to bondholders via a convoluted web of communications that consisted of lawyers and advisers both in Hong Kong and the mainland, the people said.

Investors and advisers lamented not being fully aware of whose interests were being prioritized in negotiations, nor which layers of government they were dealing with.

The group could, and did, veto creditor proposals with minimal explanation, the people added.

a transparent and efficient bankruptcy process would be better for the economy but I must admit that whatever this is it's much funnier; "hedge funds complain that Communist Party doesn't prioritise investor interests" uh huh.

[journeysofpatrickandarchana]

A dream of a lifetime will now become a "Trip of a Lifetime"!

Original blog posted - 19th January 2013

It is Patrick’s dream and I have been listening about it for almost 3 and half years now….. Some dreams remain dreams but ours is about to become a reality!

Not sure when Patrick’s dream turned into our dream but similar to his little unit in a quaint suburb of Sydney that became our home and his family became mine, his dream is now my dream.

I sailed in my teens and it took a bit of a fight to get an entry into the dinghy sailing scene in Mumbai with the organisation that first introduced me to sailing. We used to sail small dinghies called Cadet Class for under 18 year old. Every Sunday became my favourite day of the week, only because I could sail. Sunday! Who doesn’t love them? But I think I had more to look forward to than most other average 14 years old.

Sunday started with a wake up at 4.45am in the suburbs of Mumbai. Rain hail shine, exams or holidays, for five years of my life I never missed the Sunday parade. Then a journey on the Mumbai local train to Churchgate Station with the fisherwomen for company in the designated ladies compartment, followed by a bus ride to Afghan Church! The parade started at 7.30 am. Sailing started at 10.30am. As the only girl in the team I felt both privileged and discriminated at the same time. One thing was sure I had fun… the elated feeling of the wind on the water racing with the fellow sailors was worth everything, including my mother’s wrath at the end of every Sunday for getting home tired and “dark”! She was certain that no one would marry her tanned, tomboy of a daughter, who went sailing on Sundays instead of staying at home like other girls and helping in the kitchen or focusing on her HSC studies. I was not interested in boys then, I just wanted to sail.

I then sailed dragons (another type of sail boat, a vessel similar to the Mumbai Seabirds) in Hong Kong, but that was exactly opposite, I sailed in the hope of meeting a nice boy. I even went on a Tall Ship’s race from Okinawa to Osaka on Ji Fung an Outward Bound Adventure and my only offshore sailing experience till date. That experience taught me a lot about myself and my reaction when pushed out of my comfort zone.

Finally I met Patrick, in Sydney not on a sailing boat but on an Internet dating website, he loved sailing, cooking and eating “what I cooked”! And he dreamt of buying his own “Cat” (catamaran) and sailing it back from the Caribbean one day. What more could I ask for!! I knew from day one he was my soul mate.

And here we are in Sydney about to fly out in a month’s time to St. Maarten to pick-up Hestia….. A Lagoon 440 by Beneteau with 4 cabins with ensuites. Our dream boat!

Ecstatic, elated and even a little bit anxious!

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain

[nicklloydnow]

“Is China about to have its ‘Lehman’ moment? After Chinese property developer Evergrande filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., that’s been the question some have whispered. The country’s debt crisis that’s rumbled on for two years is coming to a head, with China’s shadow bank sector now defaulting on payments.

(…)

Last week, Evergrande filed for protection in the U.S. under Chapter 15 of the bankruptcy code, which helps keep creditors at bay when a company is restructuring. Evergrande’s debt is held mainly by Western investors, hence filing in Manhattan.

It’s been at the center of the Chinese property sector’s debt crisis, which first unfolded in 2021 and has reared its head again this summer. Nearly two years ago, Evergrande defaulted on making interest payments on bonds, which sparked a set of failures across the Chinese property sector.

Companies accounting for roughly 40% of China’s home sales have now defaulted on debt since the crisis first unfolded. This has led to unfinished homes and ‘ghost cities’, supply chain disruptions and institutional investors out of pocket.

(…)

It’s not the only property developer struggling this week. China’s Country Garden Holdings is looking to restructure its bond repayments totaling $535 million over three years to stave off financial trouble.

(…)

Given real estate is estimated to make up 30% of China’s GDP, there are fears the contagion in China’s real estate market could spread and create a downward spiral of the property market depressing growth.

Last week, there were rare protests in Beijing after bank subsidiary Zhongrong defaulted on several investment products without immediate plans to repay its clients. Its parent company, Zhongzhi, manages $138 billion in assets, 10% of which are exposed to the real estate market.

Moody’s has previously stated that the increased amount of defaults from property developers has raised Chinese banks’ non-performing loan rate to 4.4% by the end of last year, up from 1.9% in 2020. China’s property sector is also considered the world's largest asset class, worth around $62 trillion, so any further signs of trouble could lead to the Chinese government intervening.

(…)

As for the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong, it’s officially entered a bear market. Around half the stocks on the index are now oversold, and it’s lost 11% of its value in August so far, which sets the scene for the Hang Seng’s worst performance since October.

The fear has spread to the U.S. markets in August, with the S&P 500 suffering three straight weeks of decline. The Nasdaq lost 5.5% in value in the same period, while the Dow Jones has seen a 3.2% decline.

Several banks have also downgraded China’s GDP growth outlook, which was previously estimated at 5% for 2023. Nomura now predicts 4.8% growth, with the likes of Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Barclays all following suit.”

“Country Garden Holdings Co., the distressed Chinese developer that earlier this month missed interest payments on some dollar bonds, is leaving investors in the dark about the exact date the grace period ends.

That’s adding to signs of opaqueness in the nation’s offshore junk debt market, which has lost $87 billion in the past two years.

One of China’s biggest developers, Country Garden must repay a combined $22.5 million in two coupons within the grace period, otherwise creditors could call a default that would be the developer’s first on such debt. That would threaten even worse impact than defaulted peer China Evergrande Group given Country Garden has four times as many projects.

(…)

China’s worsening property debt crisis has prompted a slew of developers including Evergrande to use grace periods in recent years. In many cases, doing so has only bought time before they eventually went on to default, adding to record debt failures.

Growing concerns that the same fate could strike Country Garden, which had 1.4 trillion yuan ($192 billion) of total liabilities at the end of last year, have dragged Chinese junk dollar bonds deeper into distress under 65 cents. The market value of Bloomberg’s index for the securities, mostly issued by builders, has shrunk to only about $44.7 billion from some $131.8 billion two years ago.”

[mechanicalinertia]

Bubblegum Black: For A World Without Gold - Chapter 3 & Author's commentary

This is the longest chapter I've written for this fic, despite it being mostly characters talking to one another. 11k words of this shit, man. That's either great or terrible, depending on who you ask. Anyway, here we go!

Doctor Hartland: Relatively obscure character, the guy who provided Roberta with her murder-meds during the Blood Trail / El Baile De Muerte IIRC. He, like many such characters Cyberpunk 2020 would call 'ripperdocs', is what I assume is the front line of medicine in a city like Roanapur. I imagine a city where hospitals are either for syndicate soldiers or extremely rich people, and everyone else can rely on doctors who import or print any medicine they can get their hands on. Presumably 'Traditional Chinese Medicine' is pretty popular, too (did you know that the Chinese government, at least in Hong Kong, prescribed traditional remedies for COVID awhile ago? It did not, of course, help, but it was an alternative to Decadent Western Pig-Dog Medicine I guess. Eugh.)

Revy's Custom Ammo: Delayed-fuse HESH rounds, truly terrible fleshripping monstrosities, are actually something I got from Masamune Shirow's work. You know how in the original manga and in the 1995 movie, Motoko goes "Oh, is that so", shoots up the one guy, and then it takes a second before his cyborg body is blown to bits? That's the effect I'm going for. The tungsten tip is to penetrate body armor and dig into a target's vitals, although that doesn't work 100% of the time with heavier armor. Still, even if there's no penetration, damage can still be done. HESH rounds were originally designed to kill a tank crew through spalling, hitting the armor with shockwaves such that slivers of metal inside the tank would break off and kill the crew. This is something one can easily mitigate with composite armor and a Kevlar inner lining in the tank, but to translate that back to body armor is probably a little more difficult. One can imagine shockwaves and slivers of armor lining pulverizing human or light Boomer innards even without penetration.

Seburo M-057: A completely fictional Seburo handgun. For those readers who don't slobber over Shirow's non-porn work the way I do, Seburo is a Japanese gun company built up after around World War Three (in the 1990's in Shirow's timeline). Apparently it might also be a subsidiary company of Poseidon Industrial, the megacorp that becomes the entirety of Japan by the time Appleseed rolls around. Either way, it's a famous Japanese arms company, which makes one wonder: Are handguns legal in Japan in Shirow's world, where they are not in ours? For the sake of lore, let's say that Japan allows organizations like GENOM to possess and manufacture weapons for security purposes, but not individuals. Remember how in BGC2032 there was that whole subplot about how military-grade Boomers in Japan were technically illegal and ideally should only be manufactured offshore? And GENOM just ignored that law for the most part? Well, fuck that game. In the 2060's GENOM happily supplies the JSDF with whatever Boomers they want, the better to defend against China. Anyway, yeah, the M-057 is a caseless pistol, ammo stored in the gun's handle like normal, but a whole lot more of it, we're talking 18+1 per magazine. In the 2060's, caseless weapons are juuuust starting to make a comeback as a concept, aided by new chemical configurations with higher ignition temperatures and better structural integrity. Revy's handguns are the equivalent of a high-performance electric car compared to everyone else's Toyota Corollas, is probably the best way to think about it.

Second-Highest Boomer Per Capita City: First is Anchorpoint.

Lightning Hawk: A silly Resident Evil reference.

The Master: Okay, this is going to take some explaining. Or at least a picture:

Yeah, okay, you see that gun Priss has? Sure looks like a laser magnum to me, doesn't it? And, hey, look closer, that's definitely its name on the side alongside the name of the sight! So, since no one has never done anything with this information, I have decided to do it my goddamn self. Now, as I've said before in the Hardsuit Tech document, laser weapons are actually pretty viable so long as you dial down the pulse train to femtoseconds and thereby jack up the pulsed power to the gigawatt or terawatt range. I do not know what the effective overall damage of a tactical-vehicle mounted terawatt laser would be, so in the end I settled on measuring the gun’s stopping power in joules, easy enough to compare to ballistic weapons. For the record, that max power level, 5KJ, is more stopping power than even 7.62 NATO. Which might be overkill even for futuristic high-density capacitors, but what the hell.

Chiborgs: Abbreviation of Chinaborgs. In this particular iteration of the future, following World War Three between the US and China's respective power blocs (and all the ruination that has brought upon the earth), Cold War 2 has been going on ever since neither side could claim absolute victory due to climate change-induced mass crop failures starving their armies out. So GENOM has one big rival in the 'Sinobloc': The China World Prosperity Corporation, a conglomerate of old State Owned Enterprises that privatized themselves following the war, rolled themselves up into a separate power structure, about as independent from the CCP as one can get, and resumed Chinese imperial efforts in the old Belt and Road bloc. But - but but but - they've never quite managed to emulate the entirety of Boomer technology. Oh sure, they've got robots, but Boomers are biomimicry nanotech down to the cellular level, a common platform for alternative life. WPC doesn't have that, so they've aligned with the turbo-Leninists in the Party, arguing that GENOM's Boomers alienate the proletariat from their labor on a societally toxic scale, and simply continued the use of prosthetics and augmentations coupled with inferior robotics to an absurd degree. A Chiborg, then, is a WPC-produced set of augmentations designed for relatively specialized labor, turning a human into a near-machine relying on constant maintenance and subject to constant surveillance. It’s not like these ‘shells’ are expensive, or cheap but low-quality. The WPC is more than happy to sell, as per Party directives, at an ever-so-slight-loss even in economically turbulent times. The insidious part, besides the addiction to maintenance and the monitoring of every micro-movement the brain orders the body to make, is who ends up with these things permanently grafted into themselves. Migrant workers in the bottom tier of the hukou system; ethnic minorities treated as culturally and mentally inferior to the Han majority; Taiwanese or Koreans or North Viet treated as near-slaves, the ‘curse’ of their WW3-era resistance against the benevolence of True Socialist Xi Jinping Thought with Chinese Characteristics For The Eternal Bright Future having marked entire families with generations of debt only payable by concentration camp labor. Voluntary, of course, but, y’know, not really.

Mycoplastic Packaging: Fungus-derived materials that have replaced most petrochemical-based plastics by 2060. In the case of easily-biodegradable packaging like what the Master comes in, it's more akin to a sort of micromesh made from hymenophore tubes. Check out this Vice article about more high-performance materials that fungi could help make. It's not really the same principle, but I imagine it's... plausible, to grow the right materials with some funky bioengineering.

Singto Phumici: Proud Lion in Thai. Note how some districts have English names and others have Thai. You could, I imagine, track the economic bracket of a given district, or perhaps who it relies on for authority, by the language used in a name. Might throw a Cantonese name or two in there later. We'll see.

Sawyer's Bloody Business: Yes, most of the meat in the 2060's is lab-cultured tissue or an imitation thereof, 3D printed into a meal. And yes, Sawyer feeds human corpses to flesh-eating bacteria which are supposed to build up a nice big blob of biomass that can then be fed to meat cultures. One meat becomes another, just with more extra steps and less maintenance than feeding human remains to pigs as one might do in the old days. You know, they've managed to print lab-grown Wagyu. How much longer before Mickey-D's is marketing luxury synthmeats in its products? I wonder.

Sawyer In General: The idea of Sawyer being an obsessive Priss fangirl has been a fairly crucial part of this crossover ever since I started thinking about it in early April. Perhaps it runs against her canon characterization as a stone-cold killer in Gore Gore Girl, but all we have to go off of for G3 so far is chapter summaries on the wiki, and it strikes me as a somewhat sillier spinoff than mainline Lagoon. Which is fine, but then what the hell, I have license to fuck around with what we're given in terms of Sawyer, because It Is Fanfiction. I guess I find her at once intimidating but kind of pathetic? I mean, those scars on her arms definitely aren't something someone else did to her, if Hiroe's claim that she was based of a friend with depression is to be believed. Without spoiling anything, suffice to say that in earlier drafts of this chapter Sawyer was even more of a mentally unwell gore fiend than she is here. My beta took issue with it, said that there was no way that what I want to do with the character in the long run made sense if she was like that. And you know what, he was right. We haven't seen the last of the Gore Gore Girl, not by a long shot. I didn't write that scene to set a big ol' nothingburger up. You'll see.

Priss vs. Revy: Okay, could Priss actually beat Revy in a shootout, even by one point or whatever? Hard to say. Priss's skill as a marksman is more up in the air just because we've seen less of her overall, and less emphasis is placed on her ability to shoot well. But I think that she's got some skill, at least, from her time as a bosozoku and from having to make crucial railgun shots as a Saber. Also... she kind of cheated. A little. Not a lot, but enough to win. Those who have read Anatomy of a Lovedoll, or remember a little side bit from Chapter 2, will recognize how.

Fediverse: Mastodon is the most famous of these platforms, but the fediverse is more than just 'the open-source Twitter replacement', it's more... federated networks are disconnected communications networks that can still talk to each other over a common platform, so the idea behind the fediverse is a galaxy of 'instances', small servers run by a person or organization that can all share common accounts with differing rules of operation and moderators and stuff. No one company owns the protocols used, and so it's a lot more of a wild west - plenty of people who were kicked off Twitter for good reason (Nazis) have taken root on fedi instances - but the idea in mentioning fediverse-like platforms in the noosphere of the future is that they're sort of the alt-internet, the cyberpunk-y version of the internet that has otherwise been carved up by big platforms and those Everything Apps I was talking about in the Chapter 2 notes (even more prescient now that Twitter-cum-X is being set up by Elon to be Explicitly That). Forums that run the gamut from respectable to shady; software and 3D printing libraries of varying quality and trustworthiness; piracy and crime and all the corrosive forces that eat away at the respectable foundations of the Noose - these are the kind of networks Benny and Jane love to hang out on. In other words, the only ways to use the internet of the future are Facebook, Amazon, and 4chan. God, don't you miss the days of nonplatformed webpages? Let's bring Geocities back, guys. Let's do that to save the internet.

Tewwowizm: Are the Knight Sabers terrorists? In the eyes of many, they probably are, a menace against the prosperous GENOM-lead global order that... you get the idea. The hope is that enough people can recognize that the Sabers mostly kill GENOM execs and blow up GENOM assets like industrial facilities and Boomers, and avoid killing innocents for the most part. To make them superheroes and not supervillains in the eyes of the body public. This was something I wanted to play around with in this conversation as it organically unfolded. At least, I think I did. This conversation textually pulling double-duty as a way to lead Eda off the trail of the Sabers working with the Lagoon Company and also letting Dutch get all weird and philosophical... I'm happy with it, but it's weird all the same. Either way, it does get to the desired outcome, highlighting how easy it is to needle Rock now after... well, have you Lagoon manga readers figured out who died yet? Yeah, I bet you have.

Eda's Pet Naming: Not in the manga, but I think it's funny and kind of mean-spirited on Eda's part, so in it goes. Okay, what else to put in here...

What I'm Stealing From: You may have noticed, dear reader, that I'm writing a lot of Rock. Hell, the next chapter is mostly his perspective again. This is probably not a good thing, because even if I find him super interesting as a character, most people are probably here for the girls, not him. Too much Rock, too much of the Lagoon cast in general and the Sabers risk being only bit players in a larger drama, which they should not be. So that's a balancing act I haven't quite gotten the hang of. Anyway, there's one Lagoon fic I want to bring up real quickly that has had a major impact on how I think about the franchise. It's called Apotheosis, which is, in my opinion, perfect in every conceivable way. While it lacks the balls-to-the-wall super-action of Lagoon as we know it, it makes up for that by having really interesting prose, heartfelt character development, firm grounding in late 90's history, and really getting inside Rock's head, both his best impulses and his worst ones. It almost made me cry at the end, and the only reason I haven't reread it extensively is because I'm afraid I'll either succumb to Fic Envy and start kicking myself, or I'll just rip off chunks of characterization and plot wholesale. Which is kind of what I'm doing now to navigate the Lagoon cast as people, but to a lesser degree. The Sabers have to provide a catalyst, a reactant, stuff like that - that means the plot can't be the same thing beat-for-beat. It better not be. Are there other fics that have made me think about this franchise deeply? Yep. Sure are. But I don't think any are going to be as radically influential on this fic as Apotheosis. We'll see. I have high hopes for this project.

Anyway, rough draft of Chapter 4 is already done, it just has to get edited but it's pretty short. Next time, a deal will be made that will change the way you think about Roanapur forever...

[newstfionline]

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Canada mulls expelling China diplomat for targeting lawmaker (AP) Canada’s foreign minister said Thursday the country is considering the expulsion of Chinese diplomats over an intelligence agency report saying one of them plotted to intimidate the Hong Kong relatives of a Canadian lawmaker. Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said her department was summoning China’s ambassador to a meeting to underline that Canada won’t tolerate such interference. She said the intelligence agency report indicated that opposition Conservative lawmaker Michael Chong and his Hong Kong relatives were targeted after Chong criticized Beijing’s human rights record. “We’re assessing different options including the expulsion of diplomats,” Joly said before a Parliament committee. Many governments, the United Nations, and human rights groups accuse China of sweeping a million or more people from its Uyghur community and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups into detention camps, where many have said they were tortured, sexually assaulted, and forced to abandon their language and religion. China denies the accusations, which are based on evidence including interviews with survivors and photos and satellite images from Uyghur’s home province of Xinjiang, a major hub for factories and farms in far western China.

Smaller Banks Are Scrambling as Share Prices Plunge (NYT) A cluster of regional banks scrambled on Thursday to convince the public of their financial soundness, even as their stock prices plunged and investors took bets on which might be the next to fall. The tumult brought questions about the future of the lenders to the fore, suggesting a new phase in the crisis that began two months ago with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, and was punctuated on Monday by the seizure and sale of First Republic Bank. PacWest and Western Alliance were in the eye of the storm, despite the companies’ protestations that their finances were solid. PacWest’s shares lost 50 percent of their value on Thursday and Western Alliance fell 38 percent. Other midsize banks, including Zions and Comerica, also posted double-digit percentage declines. Unlike the banks that failed after depositors rushed to pull their money out, the lenders now under pressure have reported relatively stable deposit bases and don’t sit on mountains of soured loans. The most immediate threat the banks face, analysts said, is a crisis of confidence.

Oil boom starts to transform Guyana (AP) Villagers in this tiny coastal community lined up on the soggy grass, leaned into the microphone and shared what they wanted: a library, streetlights, school buses, homes, a grocery store, reliable electricity, wider roads and better bridges. “Please help us,” said Evadne Pellew-Fomundam—a 70-year-old who lives in Ann’s Grove, one of Guyana’s poorest communities—to the country’s prime minister and other officials who organized the meeting to hear people’s concerns and boost their party’s image ahead of municipal elections. The list of needs is long in this South American country of 791,000 people that is poised to become the world’s fourth-largest offshore oil producer, placing it ahead of Qatar, the United States, Mexico and Norway. The oil boom will generate billions of dollars for this largely impoverished nation. It’s also certain to spark bitter fights over how the wealth should be spent in a place where politics is sharply divided along ethnic lines: 29% of the population is of African descent and 40% of East Indian descent, from indentured servants brought to Guyana after slavery was abolished. Change is already visible. In the capital, Georgetown, buildings made of glass, steel and concrete rise above colonial-era wooden structures, with shuttered sash windows, that are slowly decaying.

Beyond King Charles (Washington Post) Though the British monarchy attracts the most global attention, there are wealthier, more powerful royals among the 28 monarchs around the world. Seventeen of them are kings. Margrethe II of Denmark is the only queen. The microstate of Andorra has co-princes, the president of France and a Spanish bishop. Japan has an emperor. Brunei and Oman have sultans. Liechtenstein and Monaco have princes. Qatar and Kuwait have emirs. Luxembourg has a grand duke. And the United Arab Emirates has a president, though he is a monarch. Although Charles is estimated to have a personal net worth between $750 million and $1.44 billion, others far surpass him. Leaders in Thailand, Saudi Arabia and Brunei are estimated to be worth well over $10 billion.

Italian foreign minister calls off Paris trip after French ‘insults’ (Reuters) Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called off a trip to Paris on Thursday, saying the French interior minister had offended Italy and its Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni with unacceptable “insults”. Earlier, the French minister, Gerald Darmanin, told RMC radio that Meloni was “unable to solve the migration problems on which she was elected” and accused her of “lying” to voters that she could end a crisis over growing numbers of boat migrants. News of his comments came as Tajani was preparing to fly to Paris to see his French counterpart—a trip that was aimed partly at improving relations between the two European Union countries that have grown increasingly brittle. France swiftly issued a statement in which it sought to reassure Rome of its willingness to work closely with Italy, but it was not enough to persuade Tajani to catch his plane. It was the latest in a series of clashes between Paris and Rome since Meloni took office last October at the head of a nationalist, conservative government which has a very different world vision to that of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Kremlin accuses Washington of directing drone attack on Putin (Washington Post) The Kremlin spokesman on Thursday accused the United States of ordering what Moscow alleges was an assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin with two drones that were sent to attack the Russian president’s official residence. “We know very well that decisions about such actions, about such terrorist attacks, are made not in Kyiv, but in Washington, and Kyiv does what it is told,” Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday. John Kirby, the spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said Peskov “is just lying.”

Russian mercenary chief Prigozhin says his forces will leave Bakhmut next week (Reuters) Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia’s Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a sudden and dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would leave the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would pull back on May 10—ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war—because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place. “I’m pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they’re doomed to perish senselessly,” Prigozhin said in a statement. Prigozhin has vented increasing anger at what he describes as lack of support from the Russian defence establishment. Earlier on Friday he appeared in a video surrounded by dozens of corpses he said were Wagner fighters, and yelling and swearing at Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov. He said they were to blame for Wagner’s losses because they had starved it of ammunition.

Earthquake-Proof, Not Corruption-Proof: Turkey’s Needless Deaths (NYT) The building began convulsing at 4:17 a.m. Firat Yayla was awake in bed, scrolling through videos on his phone. His mother was asleep down the hall. The region along Turkey’s border with Syria was known for earthquakes, but this apartment complex was new, built to withstand disaster. It was called Guclu Bahce, or Mighty Garden. Mr. Yayla’s own cousin had helped build it. He and his business partner had boasted that the complex could withstand even the most powerful tremor. So, as the earth heaved for more than a minute, Mr. Yayla, 21, and his 62-year-old mother, Sohret Guclu, a retired schoolteacher, remained inside. At that very moment, though, Mr. Yayla’s cousin, the developer, was leaping for safety from a second-story balcony. What Mr. Yayla and his mother had not known was that the system to ensure that buildings were safely constructed to code had been tainted by money and politics. A developer won zoning approval for the project after donating more than $200,000 to a local soccer club, where the mayor is an honorary president. The building inspector said that, even after the project had failed its inspection, the developers used political influence to get the doors open. The Feb. 6 earthquake revealed the shaky foundation on which so much growth was built. More than 50,000 people died as buildings toppled, crumbled or pancaked. Guclu Bahce, the mighty earthquake-proof complex, was among them. An estimated 65 people died there.

8 Are Dead in Shooting in Serbia, a Day After School Massacre (NYT) The Serbian police arrested a suspect early Friday after an hourslong overnight manhunt for a gunman who killed eight people and injured at least 14 others near Belgrade, according to Serbia’s Interior Ministry. The attack late Thursday was the nation’s second mass shooting in two days and rattled a country still reeling from an attack at a school that killed eight students and a security guard. Hundreds of police officers had gone door to door in the search for a 21-year-old male suspect, according to RTS, Serbia’s public broadcaster. They deployed helicopters and surrounded the area where they believed he was hiding, the report said. The gunman, who was in a moving vehicle, used an automatic weapon and fled the scene, according to RTS, which said the attack took place around Mladenovac, a municipality in the southern part of the capital, Belgrade.

Press group: China biggest global jailer of journalists (AP) China was the biggest global jailer of journalists last year with more than 100 behind bars, according to a press freedom group, as President Xi Jinping’s government tightened control over society. Xi’s government also was one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content, according to Reporters without Boarders. China ranked second to last on the group’s annual index of press freedom, behind only neighbor North Korea. The ruling Communist Party has tightened already strict controls on media in China, where all newspapers and broadcasters are state-owned. Websites and social media are required to enforce censorship that bans material that might spread opposition to one-party rule.

Israelis call out perks for ultra-Orthodox in latest protests (Washington Post) Israel’s protest movement, having forced the government to pause its attempt to overhaul the national judiciary system, pivoted to other targets in demonstrations across the country Thursday, including the exemption from military service and other special privileges long granted to the growing ultra-Orthodox community. Thousands marched for a “Day of Disruption to Demand Equality” focused on the unequal burdens of citizenship and status of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim as they are known in Israel. Ultra-Orthodox citizens are largely shielded from the country’s mandatory draft and educational standards and their families benefit from heavy public subsidies that allow boys and men to devote years to religious study instead of working and paying taxes in the mainstream economy. Demonstrators blocked roads, lined bridges and picketed the homes of cabinet members. While many still chanted against the judicial overhaul, which some ministers are seeking to revive, most focused on other concerns, including spiking inflation and rising crime. The anger against the special status of the Haredi has long been a dynamic in Israeli politics, but it has grown more intense as the community has ballooned to roughly 13 percent of Israel’s total population, making them the country’s fastest growing demographic.

Fighting rages in Khartoum, civilians complain of being forgotten (Reuters) Heavy gunfire echoed around Khartoum again on Friday as civilians trapped by fighting in the Sudanese capital said the army and rival paramilitary forces were ignoring their plight. “It’s been four days without electricity and our situation is difficult... We are the victims of a war that we aren’t a part of. No one cares about the citizen,” said Othman Hassan, 48, a resident of the southern outskirts of Khartoum. Despite multiple ceasefire declarations, the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) appeared to be battling each other for control of territory in the capital ahead of proposed talks. The sudden collapse into warfare has killed hundreds, triggered a humanitarian disaster, sent an exodus of refugees to neighbouring states and risks dragging in outside powers, further destabilising an already restive region.

[nigeriannewstv]

Rentalzi Review – Fake Reputation Can’t Hide The Truth Forever

Prime conditions present at rentalzi.com should be reliable and advanced enough to elevate your trading experience and help you build most lucrative strategies. At least that’s what the website owners would like you to believe.

In truth, this brokerage company is yet another shady conduct claiming to operate under full regulatory supervision. Despite not owning any legit Forex licenses, the site in question doesn’t shy away from claiming to be one of the most well regulated international brokerage conglomerates.

Regulated Nowhere

The first clue we based the beginning of our investigation was the website’s claim about the company being based in Hong Kong. SFC, being the financial authority in charge of regulating trading platforms in that jurisdiction, doesn’t have any information about this firm.

What’s more, prominent regulators like FCA, CySEC, BaFin, ASIC and other Tier 1 supervisors also possess no data about this business. The only registry where this firm shows up is the SVGFSA register. However, the website itself doesn’t say anything about HQ being in SVG, so it remains a mystery about their true location.

It is known, though, that offshore service providers like Rich FX care not for your fund safety, negative balance protection or compensation plans.

Falsified High Ratings

The involvement of review seller networks is evident in this case. If you take a look at Sitejabber, Trustedreviews, and TrustProfile, for example, all of the ratings – 100% of them, are the highest grades.

If these reviews were truthful, flawless ratings would not be present in that percentage. Also, how come their TrustPilot page is empty if they’re so famous and reliable?!

Urges You To Deposit

The determined boiler room agents who get their foul hands on your contact number can flood you with phone calls to either drive you crazy or force you to invest.

In the beginning the deal may sound like a profit chance you wouldn’t want to miss. Pushy fraudsters urge you to deposit cash into their scheme so you wouldn’t miss the last shot at getting rich until their fake offer expires.

It goes without saying that such offers are completely fake as well as the artificial hype surrounding them. You’ll be left empty handed and without proper legal support, chances to get your investment back are slim.

Markets In Focus

As published on Whois, this shady scheme has been in business for over three years now – plenty of time to earn more than just pocket money from defrauding traders from:

France

United Kingdom

Australia

Germany

At the end of the day, it matters less where you reside. Besides the swindler’s universal focus on more developed markets, no one is truly safe.

If you’ve already fallen victim for the Rentalzi scam, please refer to our chargeback experts for help in fund recovery.

Unknown Software

The nameless Rentalzi platform is advertised throughout the entire website. All customers are promised a version for every single operating system or device. It isn’t easy to even preview this allegedly convenient, high-performance terminal, though. At least not without registering for an account first.

However, that is currently impossible without the Promo code. Since we didn’t own one, we couldn’t open an account. At this point, the sole existence of this unknown trading portal is questionable.

[newspress24-blog]

The Cashier in Dubai

Investigative report tracks tangled route for money flowing to offshore companies from Moldova.

Part One

Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc left his home country in 2019 to avoid corruption charges. But an investigation into his business affairs, supported by newspress24-blog, shows that money continued to flow into his pockets long after he fled.

Black Box Plus, the investigative show of Moldova’s independent Tv channel TV8, acquired documents showing that Plahotniuc profited from every document Moldova’s Public Services Agency (ASP) issued between 2014-2019. Black Box TV followed the traces left by the businessman Alexandru Vilcu and Vladimir Andronachi, a former lawmaker with the Democratic Party (PD).

Documents show that the money reached Plahotniuc via Garsų Pasaulis, the Lithuanian printing house that won the public procurements for supplying blank cards the ASP uses to issue Moldovan documents, including passports. The financial circuit leads to a network of offshore companies registered in Cyprus, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In the summer of 2020, the scheme Plahotniuc built over the years was taken over by two Bulgaria-registered companies that appeared overnight.

These companies were the identical financial offshore vehicles through which Plahotniuc, former leader of the PD, raised alleged dividends from the auctions organised by the state telecom company Moldtelecom, the purchase of electricity from the breakaway region of Transnistria, the public-private partnership for hemodialysis services and the so–called heist of one billion US dollars from the Moldovan banking system.

The Lithuanian UAB (an acronym of uždaroji akcine bendrove, or private limited company) started supplying blank cards for Moldovan passports following tenders in 2014 and 2017. The main beneficiary of the Garsu Pasaulis company is Albert Mario Karaziwan, a Belgian citizen who owns Semlex Europe, an identification document and biometric device production company whose business practices have come under scrutiny. The Syrian-Belgium businessman has been targeted in several countries in criminal corruption cases and journalistic investigations by Reuters and OCCRP.

In 2014, Moldova’s minister of information and communications technology was Plahotniuc’s fellow party member Pavel Filip. The CRIS Registru state enterprise which in 2017 was re-organised as ASP, was headed by Sergey Railean, godfather of Filip's older son.

Between 2014 and 2021, ASP transferred 59.5 million euros to the Garsu Pasaulis company "for raw material, blank cards and personalisation services," according to documents obtained by Black Box.

ASP also paid the Lithuanian company a royalty fee for software developed for Moldova and used on three types of documents. For example, the royalty fee for each passport issued was 13.61 euros (14.49 US dollars). On October 22, 2021, prosecutors opened a criminal case against nine people from the Public Services Agency “targeted in a criminal case of abuse of office”. Prosecutors estimated that the state lost around 41 million euros (43.6 million dollars) in the case.

A LONG AND TANGLED PATH

A note from the Moldovan service for the Prevention and Combating of Money Laundering obtained by Black Box shows that more than 24 million euros (25.54 million dollars) did not stop in the company's accounts in Vilnius but ended up in Cyprus and the UAE.

“Of the 135 payments made throughout this period [2014-2019], I can tell you that the final beneficiary is obvious. At least, from what the criminal investigation bodies say, it is clear that the actual beneficiary is Vladimir Plahotniuc,” said ASP director Mircea Esanu.

Sergey Railean, the ASP former director under whose mandate the two contracts with Garsu Pasaulis were signed, said that he knew nothing about benefits for Plahotniuc.

"The tender took place according to the procedures. Therefore, nothing was outside the law," Railean said.

Told that Black Box reporters had established money transfers from Garsu Pasaulis to offshore companies affiliated with Plahotniuc, Railean was asked if he knew anything about it.

"No, absolutely not. Now it is a criminal case. The file must be completed after the trial,"he said. “[…] We did not order any software."

Railean added that ASP paid royalty fees to Garsu Pasaulis "because that was the contract".

On May 5, 2022 the Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutor's office announced that Railean had the status of accused in the so-called passport affair.

Filip, who held the post of prime minister in 2016-2019, did not answer the phone calls or requests for comment.

In May 2018, during a TV show broadcast by Prime, one of Plahotniuc's TV stations, Filip hinted that the state signed a more advantageous contract with Garsu Pasaulis than the previous one agreed in 2011 with a French company.

In 2011, Garsu Pasaulis had in fact tried to win a tender, but its application failed as it did not meet ASP’s criteria. A key condition was that applicants had experience manufacturing electronic passports for at least three European countries, as established by a decision of the Supreme Court of Justice. Garsu Pasaulis did not meet this requirement.

Garsu Pasaulis replied via e-mail that the company won the tenders and successfully delivered blank passport cards for ASP.

“As for the exact details of other commercial contracts, we cannot provide any details as confidentiality commitments bind us,” Andrius Lukosevicius, director of Garsu Pasaulis’ printing security department, wrote. “However, we can confirm that we have never had and do not currently have commercial or other relations with Mr Plahotniuc and [Romanian businesswoman] Mrs Ileana-Mihaela Burcea.”

The passport cash headed south, to the UAE firm Prime Union Solutions FZ LLC. Between January 1, 2018 and July 30, 2019 itreceived transfers for over 4.7 million euros ( five million dollars) from Garsu Pasaulis. The money continued to flow into Plahotniuc's coffers even after he fled Moldova in June 2019 when his name was linked to the disappearance of over a billion dollars - nearly one-eighth of Moldova's GDP - from the country's biggest banks between 2012 and 2014.

Employees at the Moldovan Money Laundering Prevention and Combating Service obtained information from their colleagues in Dubai and stated that the company's majority shareholders were the Romanian citizen Ileana-Mihaela Burcea and the company Inter Gnathonize Limited.

Between October 29, 2018, and July 30, 2019, a total of seven million euros (about 7.4 million dollars) were credited into Prime Union Solutions’ UAE bank account, largely sent from Garsu Pasaulis. The money then traveled to Burcea’s private account in UAE and six other offshore companies.

In liaison with UAE and Cyprus’ authorities, Moldova’s law enforcement agencies determined that Garsu Pasaulis transferred another 19.6 million euros (20.8 million dollars) to another Cyprus offshore company, Gnathonize Limited, also connected to Burcea.

The Cypriot firm opened a bank account in July 2014, four months after Garsu Pasaulis won the Moldova tender. The Lithuanian firm was the main contributor to the account until August 2018. After that, the money was transferred to the company Prime Union INC LTD in Hong Kong and marked as a "dividend payment".

Part Two

Documents from the Hong Kong public registry show that Burcea was one of Prime Union’s shareholders and in 2014-2019 the director. In 2020, Burcea requested the closing of the company. In 2018, over 600,000 euros (639,000 dollars) were transferred from one of Prime Union’s bank accounts to another offshore in Gibraltar.

In addition, 1.5 million euros (1.6 million dollars) arrived in Burcea`s personal account in the UAE and almost 800,000 euros (852,600 dollars) were directed to Recon Business Data Service, a company registered in Dubai led by Burcea. The company was closed in December 2019.

Burcea’s lawyer Cristina Savulescu declined to comment on the financial transfers from Garsu Pasaulis to her client. She also did not comment on Burcea’s connection with Plahotniuc. Savulescu said that any association of her client with an alleged criminal case was damaging to her client's image.

"The judicial procedure in any criminal case, from the time of notification to the competent bodies until the time of sending a particular person to court, is non-public and confidential, meaning that third parties cannot know the content of the carried-out procedures," Savulescu said.

Documents obtained by Black Box with the support of the OCCRP network of investigative journalists show that Plahotniuc used the same infrastructure of offshore companies to take yet more funds out of Moldova.

The former politician used the offshore network for the money obtained from other auctions organised by state enterprises including Moldtelecom, Moldova’s largest telecommunication operator, gas supplier Energocom and the health ministry for dialysis-related services.

The UAE’s Recon Business Data Services, connected to Burcea, was also involved in the financial circuit of money leaked by Plahotniuc from another scheme related to Moldtelecom, concerning public tenders won by Bass Systems SRL in PD`s ruling period.

Between March 2017 to January 2019 the Chisinau-based IT company delivered technical equipment and services for Moldtelecom worth about 41 million euros (43.6 million dollars). Out of this amount, eight million euros (8.5 million dollars) and six million dollars followed the same route to the UAE through Recon Business Data Services.

OFFSHORE ACCOUNTS

Another document obtained from the Moldovan service for the Prevention and Combating of Money Laundering shows that the Dubai-based company made several transactions to two offshores used by Plahotniuc: the UAE-based Vanguard International LTD and Vanguard International Group, registered in Samoa.

Both companies appeared in Plahotniuc's wealth statements in 2018. However, in the document submitted to Moldova’s Central Electoral Commission on the eve of the February 24, 2019 parliamentary elections, the oligarch declared 4.5 million euros (4.78 million dollars), over 11 million lei (around 585,000 dollars) and 347,000 dollars as dividends obtained from the Dubai-based Vanguard International Ltd.

Moldovan prosecutors established the origin of the money collected by Plahotniuc as "dividends".

Vanguard International LTD received 8.2 million euros (8.72 million dollars) and 2.5 million dollars from UAE-registered RECON SPC LIMITED from December 2017 to May 2019.

Burcea and another Romanian citizen, Silviu Tutuianu, were behind the company in different periods. Almost the entire amount came from the other similarly named firm, the Dubai-based Recon Business Data Service.

Plahotniuc also collected "dividends" worth 1.7 million euros (1.80 million dollars) and almost 350,000 US dollars through another offshore company, TGME INVESTMENTS SPC LTD, managed by Tutuianu.

All these companies were liquidated between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, after Plahotniuc fled Moldova. The Moldovan anti-corruption prosecutor's office opened a case for the purchase of equipment and services by Moldtelecom from SRL Bass Systems. The prosecutors confirmed that Burcea was interviewed in this criminal case, but did not disclose her status.

Burcea also managed a company that benefited from transfers from Plahotniuc’s Cyprus-registered Asia Pacific Textile Limited. This had transactions with the Cypriot offshore Melopmania Limited, the founder of BB-Dializa, a company which managed the dialysis services for the Moldovan health ministry.

BB Dializa also benefited from legal services from Cyprus-registered Kinanis offshore, founded by Burcea. The company also provided secretarial and legal services for Assentis Holdings Limited, one of the founders of Bass Systems SRL.

Asia Pacific Textile LTD received money from the Energokapital shell company. Between 2014 and 2016, the firm was used by Plahotniuc and Evgheni Shevciuk, former leader of Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria, to sell the electricity produced by the Russian-owned Moldgres Power Plant to Moldovan consumers.

The Black Box team tracked Energokapital's connections with Plahotniuc and the involvement of former DP deputy Vladimir Andronachi in the company's management.

Moldova’s service for the Prevention and Combating of Money Laundering established the connection between Burcea and two other offshore companies involved in looting a billion dollars from the country’s banking system: Sharp Prospects Limited and Lazomar Trading Limited, registered in Hong Kong and Cyprus respectively.

According to an international independent financial audit named the Kroll report, the Lazomar company received 5.6 million dollars in transfers to a Cypriot bank account. The Kroll report was commissioned by the National Bank of Moldova to investigate the theft that ravaged the country’s banking system.

Plahotniuc did not respond to requests for comment. His lawyer Lucian Rogac said that the former politician pleaded not guilty in the case generically called "blank passport cards".

"An indictment was presented to us. Other evidence to prove guilt was not shown by the prosecution. The only comment I can give you is that my client pleads not guilty to the charges," Rogac said.

In September 2022 Plahotniuc received an arrest warrant in absentia regarding the "blank passport cards" case, alongside Vladislav Zara, former director of the civil registry ASP, ex-PD deputy Andronachi and businessman Alexandru Vilcu. All of them have fled the country. According to Moldova’s ministry of justice, Plahotniuc is currently in Northern Cyprus.

[vietnamstar]

China's exporters enjoyed the benefits of a weak yuan. Now that's changing and cutting into profits

A bank employee count China’s renminbi (RMB) or yuan notes next to U.S. dollar notes at a Kasikornbank in Bangkok, Thailand, January 26, 2023. Athit Perawongmetha | Reuters BEIJING — Chinese companies seeking growth from exports face a new challenge: a strengthening yuan. The “offshore” yuan traded in Hong Kong surged Monday against the U.S. dollar to its strongest level for 2024 — below 7.1 —…

[technologycompanynews]

GIC Backs $3.9B TPG Debt Fund and More Asia Real Estate Headlines - Information Important Web - BLOGGER https://www.merchant-business.com/gic-backs-3-9b-tpg-debt-fund-and-more-asia-real-estate-headlines/?feed_id=157195&_unique_id=66b266ff254b3 Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC backs TPG’s Twin Brook Capital PartnersTPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners leads Mingtiandi’s headline roundup today, as the private equity firm closes its $3.9 billion direct lending fund backed by GIC and the World Bank. Also making news, Singapore-listed CapitaLand Ascott Trust secures a $124.5 million green loan from OCBC and China’s Country Garden continues to see sales slide.GIC Backs $3.9B TPG Debt FundTPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners closed its fifth direct lending fund with $3.9 billion in aggregate capital commitments, surpassing a $3 billion target, according to a person familiar with the matter.TPG AG Direct Lending Fund V received $1.7 billion of commitments in the 10 days before the offering period ended, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a private subject. Read more>>Ascott Trust Lands $124M Green Loan From OCBCCapitaLand Ascott Trust has secured a S$165 million ($124.5 million) sustainability-linked multi-currency revolving credit facility from OCBC.Proceeds from the loan will be used by the Singapore-listed REIT for general corporate purposes. The financing solution was launched in 2023 and grants CLAS interest rate reductions upon meeting agreed annual greenhouse gas emission targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. Read more>>Country Garden Sales Fell 72% in JulyCountry Garden saw its contracted sales plunge 72 percent to RMB 3.41 billion ($477 million) in July from a year earlier, adding to the Chinese developer’s woes as it tries to avoid liquidation.The result follows a 73 percent slide in June, corporate filings show. The distressed real estate giant is counting on a turnaround in sales to increase its survival chances, as it fights a wind-up petition in a Hong Kong court after its 2023 default. Last week, it was given more time to work on an offshore debt restructuring plan when the case was adjourned to January. Read more>>Korean Warehouse Market Slumps on Rising VacancyLogistics centres in Seoul’s suburbs are suffering from oversupply and rising vacancy rates, according to a report from South Korean advisory firm Real Estate Direct.New supply of 184,525 square metres (1.9 million square feet) of warehouse space was introduced in the Seoul Metropolitan Area in the first half of this year, raising the accumulated supply by 0.6 percent to 33.7 million square metres, the report said. Read more>>Mainland Developers Head Into Rough Earnings SeasonChinese developers are expected to report another round of weak results in their latest report cards, extending a streak of losses since 2020 as state support measures fail to overcome a loss of confidence among homebuyers and financiers.Some of the nation’s biggest private homebuilders are likely to report an average 19 percent drop in core net profit for the January-to-June period, according to CGS International Securities based on its forecasts for five companies, including China Vanke, Longfor Group and Greentown China Holdings. Read more>>SGX-Listed Hatten Land Files for Judicial ManagementSingapore-listed developer Hatten Land on Monday filed an application to the general division of the city-state’s High Court to be placed under judicial management.In a bourse filing Monday night, the group said it has proposed Tan Wei Cheong and Lim Loo Khoon of Deloitte & Touche to be appointed the joint judicial managers of Hatten Land. The group has also applied for Tan and Lim to serve as interim judicial managers pending the determination of the application. Read more>>Dasin Retail Trust Investors Escalate War With TrusteeDasin Retail Trust Management has been accused by a group of requisitionists of not convening an extraordinary general meeting within the timelines, thus breaching Singapore’s Business Trusts Act.

The group of requisitionists said they will now proceed to exercise their rights under the law to hold the EGM within three months of deposit of the requisition notice — that is, before 20 September. Read more>>Mainland Economist Predicts Drawn-Out Recovery for Real Estate MarketReal estate has become the most intense issue affecting China’s economy. In the past, China’s real estate was a focus of investment for all of society. Real estate prices were rising continuously, and it was commonly accepted that every adult should have his own house, which is a unique belief.In this context, more middle-class families kept purchasing — even those not qualified to buy a house. This pushed property prices to new highs in a very short period of time around 2017, a sign a bubble was about to burst. Read more>>“TPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners leads Mingtiandi’s headline roundup today, as the private equity firm closes its $3.9 billion direct lending fund backed by GIC and the World Bank. Also…”Source Link: https://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/crelist/roundup-gic-backs-3-9b-tpg-debt-fund/ http://109.70.148.72/~merchant29/6network/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/g0b46a1cc5725cc1d188c19a14cd5158d2569fa64c0cfd76017cdbf059e07e2c5d2ffc96843cabeffacdad635c9ce640aaa6.jpeg BLOGGER - #GLOBAL Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC backs TPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners TPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners leads Mingtiandi’s headline roundup today, as the private equity firm closes its $3.9 billion direct lending fund backed by GIC and the World Bank. Also making news, Singapore-listed CapitaLand Ascott Trust secures a $124.5 million green loan from OCBC … Read More

[internetcompanynews]

GIC Backs $3.9B TPG Debt Fund and More Asia Real Estate Headlines - Information Important Web - BLOGGER https://www.merchant-business.com/gic-backs-3-9b-tpg-debt-fund-and-more-asia-real-estate-headlines/?feed_id=157193&_unique_id=66b265e0dff78 Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC backs TPG’s Twin Brook Capital PartnersTPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners leads Mingtiandi’s headline roundup today, as the private equity firm closes its $3.9 billion direct lending fund backed by GIC and the World Bank. Also making news, Singapore-listed CapitaLand Ascott Trust secures a $124.5 million green loan from OCBC and China’s Country Garden continues to see sales slide.GIC Backs $3.9B TPG Debt FundTPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners closed its fifth direct lending fund with $3.9 billion in aggregate capital commitments, surpassing a $3 billion target, according to a person familiar with the matter.TPG AG Direct Lending Fund V received $1.7 billion of commitments in the 10 days before the offering period ended, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing a private subject. Read more>>Ascott Trust Lands $124M Green Loan From OCBCCapitaLand Ascott Trust has secured a S$165 million ($124.5 million) sustainability-linked multi-currency revolving credit facility from OCBC.Proceeds from the loan will be used by the Singapore-listed REIT for general corporate purposes. The financing solution was launched in 2023 and grants CLAS interest rate reductions upon meeting agreed annual greenhouse gas emission targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. Read more>>Country Garden Sales Fell 72% in JulyCountry Garden saw its contracted sales plunge 72 percent to RMB 3.41 billion ($477 million) in July from a year earlier, adding to the Chinese developer’s woes as it tries to avoid liquidation.The result follows a 73 percent slide in June, corporate filings show. The distressed real estate giant is counting on a turnaround in sales to increase its survival chances, as it fights a wind-up petition in a Hong Kong court after its 2023 default. Last week, it was given more time to work on an offshore debt restructuring plan when the case was adjourned to January. Read more>>Korean Warehouse Market Slumps on Rising VacancyLogistics centres in Seoul’s suburbs are suffering from oversupply and rising vacancy rates, according to a report from South Korean advisory firm Real Estate Direct.New supply of 184,525 square metres (1.9 million square feet) of warehouse space was introduced in the Seoul Metropolitan Area in the first half of this year, raising the accumulated supply by 0.6 percent to 33.7 million square metres, the report said. Read more>>Mainland Developers Head Into Rough Earnings SeasonChinese developers are expected to report another round of weak results in their latest report cards, extending a streak of losses since 2020 as state support measures fail to overcome a loss of confidence among homebuyers and financiers.Some of the nation’s biggest private homebuilders are likely to report an average 19 percent drop in core net profit for the January-to-June period, according to CGS International Securities based on its forecasts for five companies, including China Vanke, Longfor Group and Greentown China Holdings. Read more>>SGX-Listed Hatten Land Files for Judicial ManagementSingapore-listed developer Hatten Land on Monday filed an application to the general division of the city-state’s High Court to be placed under judicial management.In a bourse filing Monday night, the group said it has proposed Tan Wei Cheong and Lim Loo Khoon of Deloitte & Touche to be appointed the joint judicial managers of Hatten Land. The group has also applied for Tan and Lim to serve as interim judicial managers pending the determination of the application. Read more>>Dasin Retail Trust Investors Escalate War With TrusteeDasin Retail Trust Management has been accused by a group of requisitionists of not convening an extraordinary general meeting within the timelines, thus breaching Singapore’s Business Trusts Act.

The group of requisitionists said they will now proceed to exercise their rights under the law to hold the EGM within three months of deposit of the requisition notice — that is, before 20 September. Read more>>Mainland Economist Predicts Drawn-Out Recovery for Real Estate MarketReal estate has become the most intense issue affecting China’s economy. In the past, China’s real estate was a focus of investment for all of society. Real estate prices were rising continuously, and it was commonly accepted that every adult should have his own house, which is a unique belief.In this context, more middle-class families kept purchasing — even those not qualified to buy a house. This pushed property prices to new highs in a very short period of time around 2017, a sign a bubble was about to burst. Read more>>“TPG’s Twin Brook Capital Partners leads Mingtiandi’s headline roundup today, as the private equity firm closes its $3.9 billion direct lending fund backed by GIC and the World Bank. Also…”Source Link: https://www.mingtiandi.com/real-estate/crelist/roundup-gic-backs-3-9b-tpg-debt-fund/ http://109.70.148.72/~merchant29/6network/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/g0b46a1cc5725cc1d188c19a14cd5158d2569fa64c0cfd76017cdbf059e07e2c5d2ffc96843cabeffacdad635c9ce640aaa6.jpeg GIC Backs $3.9B TPG Debt Fund and More Asia Real Estate Headlines - Information Important Web - #GLOBAL BLOGGER - #GLOBAL