Month: April 2023

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is planning to triple its stake in US investment bank Jefferies Financial Group, deepening ties between the Wall Street and Tokyo banks in an effort to compete with larger rivals. SMBC, Japan’s second-biggest bank, first agreed to take a stake of up to 4.9 per cent in Jefferies in 2021 and now plans to raise its ownership to as much as 15 per cent by acquiring shares on the open market, the two companies said in a statement on Thursday. The deal is part of a…

AstraZeneca is exploring potential deals in China, declaring the market “completely open” to foreign drugmakers. Pascal Soriot, AstraZeneca’s chief executive, has just returned from two weeks in the country, where the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has signed three licensing partnerships in recent months. “Three business development deals and more to come. And we definitely could make acquisitions. There is no limitation to this,” he said on Thursday, as the company unveiled its quarterly financial results. He pointed to an “explosion of biotech companies that are coming up with innovative medicines and new…

Chinese staff at the so-called Confucius Institutes across the United Kingdom are recruited to enforce Chinese Communist Party (CCP) discipline and values in the country, new research has found. The state-sponsored Confucius Institute program, named after the ancient Chinese philosopher, was established 20 years ago to promote Chinese language and culture overseas and support Chinese-language teaching. There are more than 530 institutes based at universities worldwide, 30 of them are in the U.K. ‘Are Confucius Institutes legal?’, a new report by the organization UK-China Transparency (UKCT), looked into the recruitment…

Singapore has doubled its tax on private property purchases by foreigners to 60 per cent in an unexpected move to cool a housing boom that has in part been driven by buyers from mainland China. Foreigners who have secured permanent residency in Singapore will only pay a stamp duty of 5 per cent, but they will pay 30 per cent — up from 25 per cent — if they buy a second residential property. Entities or trusts purchasing any residential property will now pay a rate of 65 per cent,…

Japanese brewer Kirin has stepped up its push into healthcare after launching a A$1.9bn ($1.3bn) takeover offer for Australia’s largest vitamin company Blackmores. The company, founded in the 1930s, is one of Australia’s best-known alternative healthcare brands. Marcus Blackmore, its largest shareholder and son of the founder, and the company’s board backed the Kirin offer of A$95 a share, an almost 24 per cent premium to the share’s closing price on Wednesday. Blackmores shares rose 22 per cent to A$93.64 on Thursday. Blackmores is the latest in a string of…