UBS Wealth Sees Gains For Japan’s Value Stocks After 30% Rally
UBS Global Wealth Management expects Japan’s cheaply valued stocks to extend their outperformance into 2024 amid a revival
2023-11-22 12:20
Israel Approves Hostage Deal and Pause in War With Hamas
Israel’s cabinet and Hamas backed a deal that will free dozens of hostages from Gaza in return for
2023-11-22 11:58
China Allows a Trickle of Critical Minerals Exports Ahead of Graphite Curbs
China exported small amounts of two minerals crucial to high-tech manufacturing in October, marking a resumption in sales
2023-11-22 11:49
Maryland handgun licensure law is unconstitutional, US court rules
By Nate Raymond (Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday declared that Maryland's licensing requirements for people seeking to buy
2023-11-22 10:57
World’s largest crypto exchange pays $4.3bn to settle federal cases as CEO resigns
Binace, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, will pay over $4bn to US officials after admitting to unlicensed money transfers, sanctions violations, and willfully failing to institute anti-money laundering protections, federal officials announced on Tuesday. The oversights allowed trading with sanctioned nations like Iran, Cuba, and Syria, and failed to institute systems to report suspicious potential transactions with terror groups, according to the Treasury Department. “Binance was allowing illicit actors to transact freely, supporting activities from child sexual abuse to illegal narcotics to terrorism,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellensaid on Tuesday. Changpeng Zhao, the founder of and CEO of Binance, is also stepping down, and will pay a $50m fine after pleading guilty to related charges. He could face up to 18 months in prison. “I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility,” the executive wrote on X. “This is best for our community, for Binance, and for myself.” Federal officials described a wide-ranging set of problems at the crypto exchange, which at times handled two-thirds of global crypto trades. “It willfully enabled hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions between American users and users subject to US sanctions,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in remarks on Tuesday. “And its platform accommodated criminals across the world who used Binance to move their stolen funds and other criminal proceeds. “Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people.” The massive penalty, one of the largest in US financial regulation history, will also go towards resolving inquiries from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. On multiple occasions, Binance leadership intentionally took steps that allowed dangerous and illegal transactions to take place, according to the Justice Department. Binance knew it served US customers, meaning it had to register with FinCen and implement anti-money laundering controls, but “chose not to comply,” per the DOJ. Rather than set up these protections, the company created a separate Binance.US platform in 2019, while seeking to encourage VIP customers to obscure their accounts and continue using the main exchange, officials said. “Binance executives, including Zhao, made a plan to contact VIP customers and help the VIP register a new account for an offshore entity and transfer holdings to that account,” the DoJ said in an announcement of the agreement on Tuesday. “Binance employees also called US VIPs to encourage them to provide information that suggested the customer was not located in the United States.” The company, knowing it had US customers, also failed to introduce controls that would stop them from making trades with sanctioned jurisdictions like Iran, resulting in over $898m in trades between US and Iran-based users between January 2019 and May 2022. At one point, according to the DoJ, Zhao told employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” while in another instance, a compliance employee wrote in a message, “We need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days - come to binance we got cake for you.’” In a statement on Tuesday, Binance acknowledge making “criminal violations.” “These resolutions acknowledge our company’s responsibility for historical, criminal compliance violations, and allow our company to turn the page on a challenging yet transformative chapter of learning and growth,” the company wrote. “With the compliance and governance enhancements enshrined in our commitments, we can begin to share our vision for Binance’s exciting future and the future of the crypto industry.” The company also emphasised that the resolutions don’t allege Binance misappropriated user funds or engaged in market manipulation. Richard Teng, the company’s former global head of regional markets, will take over as CEO, according to Binance. The massive agreement with federal regulators will also require Binance to accept the appointment of a government monitor to oversee the business and bar Zhao from involvement with the company until three years after the monitor is appointed, according to court records viewed by The New York Times. Notably, the Securities and Exchange Commission was not a part of the Binance agreement. The SEC sued Binance and Zhao in June, alleging that they used companies beneficially owned by Zhao to inflate trading prices and make money off customers, allegedly mixing customer funds with Binance money. “While we take the SEC’s allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company responded at the time in a statement. “And, to be clear: any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform have ever been at risk are simply wrong, and there is zero justification for the Staff’s action in light of the ample time the Staff has had to conduct their investigation,” the company added in the statement. The massive settlement comes just weeks after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty in federal court of defrauding customers on his popular cryptocurrency exchange out of billions of dollars. Bankman-Fried’s defence team has vowed to fight the charges.
2023-11-22 10:49
Inflation Slows in Canada, Cracking Door Open to Rate Cuts
Consumer prices in Canada rose at the slowest pace since June, a reassuring sign for central bank policymakers
2023-11-22 00:49
ECB’s Lagarde Says Too Early to Declare Victory on Inflation
The European Central Bank can’t declare victory over inflation just yet and will have to remain “attentive” until
2023-11-22 00:45
Ford to resume building Michigan electric vehicle battery plant delayed by strike, but scale it back
Ford Motor Co. is resuming construction on a Michigan electric vehicle battery plant that the company postponed two months ago during a strike by the United Auto Workers union
2023-11-22 00:26
Germany's defense minister unveils more help for Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius vowed Tuesday to keep supporting Ukraine’s efforts to win its war against Russia, pledging further military aid worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion). The new support is to include further Iris-T SLM anti-aircraft missile systems as well as anti-tank mines and 155-millimeter artillery shells, German news agency dpa reported. “We are talking about 20,000 additional shells,” Pistorius said at a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, in Kyiv, according to dpa. Andrii Yermak, the head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said it was “a great aid package.” Pistorius's unannounced trip to the Ukrainian capital came a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Ukraine and pledged American support “for the long haul,” including an additional $100 million in weapons from U.S. stockpiles. The visits appeared to be part of an international political effort to keep the war in the public mind as other issues clamor for attention, including the Israel-Hamas conflict. European Council President Charles Michel also arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday, which is the 10th anniversary of what Ukraine calls its Revolution of Dignity. That uprising brought momentous change for Ukraine, pushing it closer to the West and bringing confrontation with Moscow. Pistorius paid tribute to the demonstrators who were killed during the pro-European protests 10 years ago, dpa reported. “Courageous people of all ages took to the streets for freedom, for rapprochement with Europe, and paid for it with their lives,” Pistorius said. He put down red roses at a makeshift memorial to those killed. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in a video message, saluted the Ukrainian desire for freedom and its application to join the 27-nation European Union. “The future of Ukraine is in the European Union,” she said. “The future that the Maidan fought for has finally just begun,” she said in a reference to central Kyiv's Independence Square. For Moscow, the Ukrainian revolt was fomented by Western interests, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday reaffirmed the Kremlin’s view that it was “a coup, a forceful coup financed from abroad.” Ukraine’s current fight to push out the Kremlin’s forces has lasted almost 21 months. A recent Ukrainian counteroffensive apparently has yielded no major changes on the battlefield, and another tough winter of attritional warfare lies ahead. The U.K. defense ministry said Russia could target Ukraine’s power grid again, just like last winter when Moscow sought to wear down local resistance by denying civilians home heating and running water. “Russia has now refrained from launching its premier air-launched cruise missiles from its heavy bomber fleet for nearly two months, likely allowing it to build up a substantial stock of these weapons,” the ministry in London said Tuesday. Germany is the second biggest single provider of military and financial support to Ukraine after the United States, and German officials said Pistorius aimed to assess the effectiveness of its aid as well as take stock of the fighting during his visit. Pistorius said he wanted to “express our solidarity, our deep solidarity and admiration for the courageous, brave and costly fight that is being waged here.” Meanwhile, two Russian missiles struck a hospital in the eastern Donetsk region, wounding six people and possibly leaving more buried under rubble, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Tuesday. Russian forces attacked Ukraine overnight with 10 Shahed-type drones, four S-300 missiles and one Iskander-K cruise missile, Ukraine’s air force said Tuesday. Nine Shahed drones and the Iskander-K missile were successfully intercepted on Monday night, it said. No casualties were immediately reported. At least five Ukrainian civilians were killed and 10 others were injured in southeastern regions of the country over the previous 24 hours, the presidential office said Tuesday. Civilians have been victims of Russia's barrages on an almost daily basis. At least 10,000 Ukrainian civilians, including more than 560 children, have been killed and more than 18,500 have been injured since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said Tuesday. In other developments, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that Ukrainian efforts to cross the Dnieper River on the southern front line have failed. He told top Russian military brass that Moscow’s forces “are steadily holding positions along the entire line of contact and are gradually improving their positions.” Ukraine’s military claimed last week its troops had secured multiple bridgeheads on the river’s eastern bank in the Kherson region. That would be a small but potentially significant strategic advance amid fighting that has largely come to a standstill. ___ Associated Press reporters Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report. ___ Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine Read More Poland set to get more than 5 billion euros in EU money after commission approves recovery plan NATO head says violence in Kosovo unacceptable while calling for constructive dialogue with Serbia Slovakia's new government led by populist Robert Fico wins a mandatory confidence vote Ukrainian troops beat back attacks near Bakhmut as Putin’s forces make desperate push Ukrainians who fled their country for Israel find themselves yet again living with war 10 years later, a war-weary Ukraine reflects on events that began its collision course with Russia
2023-11-22 00:20
Oil Pares Two-Day Advance as Traders Second-Guess OPEC+ Meeting
Oil pared a two-day advance as traders tempered expectations that OPEC+ will intervene in the market to bolster
2023-11-21 23:50
Broadcom $61 Billion VMWare Deal Wins Chinese Ok With Conditions
Broadcom Inc.’s $61 billion takeover of software maker VMware Inc. won approval from Chinese regulators, albeit with a
2023-11-21 23:48
Home sales slumped to slowest pace in more than 13 years in October as prices, borrowing costs, soar
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slumped in October to their slowest pace in more than 13 years, as surging mortgage rates and rising prices kept many prospective homebuyers on the sidelines
2023-11-21 23:30