Global trade war concerns hurt most S-E Asian stocks; Singapore rises

The Philippines stocks fell on Tuesday on the peso’s continued slide coupled with renewed trade war concerns, while Singapore extended gains for a fifth session thanks to “window dressing” attempts by portfolio managers ahead of the third quarter close. Broader Asian stocks struggled as the latest round of US-China tariffs revived fears the trade dispute would knock global growth, with neither side looking to be in a mood to compromise.

MSCI’s broadest index of APAC shares outside Japan edged down 0.3 per cent.

“The failure of China and the US to come to terms on the negotiation table ... is creating weakness in major economies in Asia, and has resulted in most Southeast Asian equities to retreat from what they gained last week,” said Manny Cruz, a Manila-based analyst at Asiasec Equities Inc.

Filippino stocks fell the most in the region, down about 0.7 per cent after two days of gains, with financials and real-estate stocks weighing on the index.

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Flipkart deal wrapped, Walmart now eyeing deals in Brazil and Japan

The sun never sets on Walmart Inc.’s empire, thanks to its network of stores across five continents. But in the span of 10 days, chief executive Doug McMillon has begun dramatically redrawing the retailer’s map, and there’s likely more to come as it places bets to remain on top.

“All of a sudden, everything is in play,” said Dave Marcotte, an analyst at Kantar Retail.

In less than two weeks, Walmart has agreed to cede control of its British business to a competitor and spend $16 billion to acquire India’s e-commerce leader in its biggest-ever deal, fending off Amazon.com Inc. The wheeling and dealing show how McMillon is focusing on high-potential markets like China and India, finding partners to help it battle online and cutting loose middling businesses. He’s got more work to do, though, and subpar markets like Brazil and Japan might be next on his list.

Walmart’s far-flung international units don’t get much attention, but they’re important as a source of cash, management talent and ideas that percolate into its core U.S. operations. Sales growth outside the U.S. once topped more than 10 percent annually, adjusted for currency moves, but it’s less than half that now as sluggish economies, store closures and fierce competition have taken their toll.

Modi-Xi Wuhan summit: Why Chinese media thinks it's a good idea; 10 points

The Narendra Modi-Xi Jinping summit in China's Wuhan city on April 27-28 will see the Indian Prime Minister and Chinese President discussing US President Donald Trump's "protectionist" trade policy and the "unprecedented" changes in the world order in the past 100 years, along with the contentious bilateral issues like China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), and the India-China border dispute, which came to a head during last year's Doklam standoff. Meanwhile, ahead of the meeting, official Chinese media commented that the Modi-Xi summit could be as significant as the one between former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1988.

Ahead of the Modi-Xi summit, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday attended the meetings of the defence and foreign ministers of the SCO in China. Swaraj on Tuesday slammed Pakistan for sheltering terrorists and urged the SCO to act against countries that promote terrorism.

China Development Bank withdraws insolvency petition against RCom

China Development Bank (CDB), the biggest foreign lender to India's Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom), on Friday withdrew a petition seeking to drag the indebted telecoms carrier into insolvency.

A lawyer for CDB told the National Company Law Tribunal that the Chinese bank had filed to withdraw the petition. The tribunal allowed CDB's plea to go forward.

CDB, which is owed around $2 billion along with two other Chinese banks, had filed the petition in November seeking insolvency proceedings against RCom, saying a large amount of loan principal and interest payments was overdue.

After RCom's debt-reduction plan, including an asset sale to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd, was announced last week, CDB told Reuters that it was in talks with RCom.

Details of the terms of a possible settlement between the Chinese bank and RCom were not immediately known. By 0847 GMT, RCom shares were trading 4.2 percent higher in a Mumbai market that was up 0.4 percent.

Last week, RCom signed a deal to sell most of its wireless assets to Jio in a deal people familiar with the matter said was worth nearly 240 billion rupees ($3.8 billion), subject to final adjustments at the time the transaction closes.

Moody's upgrade: CEA Arvind Subramanian hopes other agencies follow suit

Top government officials today hailed the rating upgrade by Moody's as "long overdue" and hoped others such as S&P and Fitch will follow suit as it presses ahead with steps to ratchet up growth.

The US-based Moody's today upgraded India's sovereign rating after 13 years to Baa2 with a stable outlook, from Baa3 earlier.

"It's a welcome development, but we also feel it was long overdue... it's a recognition of the actions that the government has undertaken like GST, bankruptcy. We also need to keep all these things in perspective," Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian said.

The government, he said, "is going to do what it has to do on the domestic front -- employment growth, economic growth, reviving investment," he told reporters here.

Asked if he expects other agencies like S&P and Fitch to upgrade, he said: "Let's hope they are not inconsistent amongst each other."

Subramanian had earlier observed that rating agencies follow inconsistent policies while rating India and China.

Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg said the upgrade is definitely a big vindication of the structural and institutional reforms that India is doing.

"The fiscal deficit consolidation, debt control and all so everything which the government has done in the past couple of years have been recognised. They are projecting a little rise in the trajectory going forward, so they are conscious of the real dynamics of the debt situation. We, of course, remain committed to the fiscal path," Garg said.

Apple's iPhone 8 pops open due to bloated battery: Chinese state media

A fresh case of Apple Inc's new iPhone popping open due to a swollen battery has been reported in state media in China, the world's biggest smartphone market where the US firm is seeking to revive faltering sales.

The incident comes as Apple investigates similar cases reported in Taiwan and Japan of batteries in its latest iPhone 8 Plus becoming bloated, causing the device's casing to open.

On its website on Thursday, China's state-backed ThePaper.cn cited an iPhone buyer surnamed Liu as saying his newly purchased iPhone 8 Plus arrived cracked open on Oct 5. There was no sign of scorching or an explosion.

Liu told ThePaper he bought the handset through online marketplace of JD.com Inc. He said he did not charge the new device and returned it to the seller.

Pictures taken by Liu and displayed on ThePaper's website showed an iPhone 8 plus split open along the side featuring the sim card holding, with the phone's internal parts visible.

An Apple spokesperson said the company is looking into the matter and declined to comment further.

The incident comes as indifferent reviews of the iPhone 8, which comes 10 years after Apple released the first version of the revolutionary phone, drove down shares of the company since the handset's launch.

Some investors worry whether pre-orders for the device were well below previous launches, although some Apple fans are waiting for the premium iPhone X due out in early November.

Apple competes in China with local makers, including Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Oppo which sell phones with high-end features at lower prices.

Amazon edges past Microsoft to become world's leading IaaS cloud provider

Amazon become the main supplier inside the Infrastructure-as-a-provider (IaaS) public Cloud services marketplace in 2016 with 44.2 per cent share, leaving Microsoft, Alibaba, Google and others a ways at the back of, marketplace studies company Gartner stated on Wednesday.

according to Gartner, the global IaaS public Cloud marketplace grew 31 consistent with cent in 2016 amounting to $22.1 billion -- up from $16.8 billion in 2015.

Amazon served the maximum customers across the broadest variety of use instances, from Cloud-native startups to mid-marketplace corporations to huge organisations.

"The market for Cloud services is developing faster than certainly every other IT marketplace today, with a great deal of this increase coming on the price of the traditional, non-Cloud services," stated Sid Nag, studies Director, Gartner, in a announcement.

"even as Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-carrier (SaaS) also are exhibiting sturdy growth, IaaS is expected to expose the fastest boom over the following 5 years," Nag delivered.

but, Gartner anticipated that Amazon will witness boom erosion in proportion as the non-hyperscale vendors struggle to provide fee thru their services, at the same time as other IaaS marketplace leaders will see an growth in increase.

Atmosphere not right for a Xi-Modi Hamburg meet, says China amid stand-off

China today said the "atmosphere" was "not right" for a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, amidst a standoff between the armies of the two countries in the Sikkim section.

"The atmosphere is not right for a bilateral meeting between President Xi and Prime Minister Modi," a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said ahead of the G20 Summit in the German city of Hamburg from tomorrow.

China and India have been engaged in a standoff in the Dokalam area near the Bhutan tri-junction for past 19 days after a Chinese Army's construction party attempted to build a road. Doka La is the Indian name for the region which Bhutan recognises as Dokalam, while China claims it as part of its Donglang region.

There were reports that Modi and Xi may meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit to resolve the standoff.

China's state-run media yesterday had quoted Chinese analysts as saying that Beijing would be forced to use a "military way" to end the standoff in the Sikkim sector if India refuses to listen to the "historical lessons" being offered by it.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Full text of Jaishankar telling China not to fear India's rise

Breaking news - A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for Chinese restraint in the Asia Pacific region and asked Bejing to show sensitivity and respect for New Delhi’s core concerns and interests, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar on Wednesday said the growth in China’s power and its implications for Asia was a challenge and something that is difficult to predict. He criticised India's largest neighbour for not honouring concerns over territorial integrity while building the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The CPEC passes through the Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan region, on which India has territorial claims. Here is the full text of S Jaishankar speech by foreign secretary at second Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi.

I am delighted to welcome you all to the 2nd edition of the Raisina Dialogue. As they will probably be saying at every international gathering this year, the landscape looks dramatically different than it did a year ago. However, the organisers of this conference may have been a bit more perceptive than most. By accident or design, they have selected a theme – the new normal of multilateralism with multipolarity – that certainly fits the bill for the days ahead.

The world we enter in 2017 is marked by unevenness, possibilities, uncertainties, known and unknown unknowns. The United States seems ready to change the terms of its engagement with the world. Relations between US and Russia could undergo a transformation that we may not have seen since 1945. Its dimensions, leave alone implications, are hard to predict. Europe, engrossed in multiple domestic challenges and reconfiguring itself, signals less appetite for more distant politics, even as it watches these developments.

The picture in Asia, however, looks somewhat different. The economic outlook is more positive, although sentiment is clearly affected by developments in the West. Social and political stability are not in doubt and levels of confidence are somewhat higher. Asia, of course, is not without its challenges, among them maritime disputes that acquired a salience in the last few years. Broadly speaking, the growth in China’s power and its expression abroad remain a dynamic factor in Asia. Japan is another major variable, as it seems to be preparing for more responsibilities. (Read More)

Chinese brands takes 50% of India's smartphone market

Latest Business News - Chinese brands took their largest ever slice of the $10-billion Indian smartphone market in late 2016, accounting for more than one in every two phones sold - a growing market share that ate into sales from top-selling Samsung Electronics.

Samsung, the single most popular smartphone brand in India, commanded a roughly 30% market share just over a year ago. That slipped to 21% in November, according to tech research firm Counterpoint, the last month for which data is available.

Meanwhile - thanks to low cost, improved technology and an advertising blitz - Chinese brands like Oppo, Lenovo, OnePlus, Gionee and Xiaomi took a combined share of over 50%, compared to just 19% a year ago.

"Chinese brands are offering quality that is at par with Samsung, at a better price," said Manish Khatri, who owns two multi-brand smartphone outlets in Mumbai. "Of every 10 phones I sell, almost six to seven are now Chinese brands."(Read More)