Finance news

US, Qatar Push Back against EU Methane Rules

The countries asked for a 'pragmatic approach' to clarifying the rules and adopting changes to allow importers to continue to obtain oil and gas needed by the EU.

Asian Demand for Mideast Oil Slows after Splurge

Asian refiners have slowed purchases of Middle Eastern crude after a buying spree over the past three weeks, with oil majors and traders stepping in to take some of the surplus barrels.

Malaysian Major Makes Gas Discovery in Suriname

Malaysia’s state energy firm Petronas has made a natural gas discovery offshore Suriname, the country’s president said this week, as quoted by Reuters, expecting the Malaysian major to make the final investment decision on the development of Block 52 by the end of the year. “To date, we have made eight successful exploration discoveries, unlocking over more than one billion barrels of oil equivalent, while continuing advancing lower-carbon solutions, safe operations and investment in people, tec

Anti-war protesters jeer Japan’s Takaichi over softening pacifist stance

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was heckled at a World War II memorial event by protesters angry about Tokyo’s further shift away from its decades-long pacifist stance, television footage showed. Close US ally Japan in April loosened rules on lethal arms exports and Takaichi, long seen as a security hawk who last year riled mainland China with comments about Taiwan, has said she wants to revise the constitution. A small but vocal number of demonstrators shouted slogans throughout...

Trump Orders Gas Price Gouging Probe

President Trump has ordered an investigation into possible price gouging at fuel stations, an investigation he announced in a social media post. “The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil. Those prices are dropping ‌like a rock! In other words, customers are being "gouged",” Trump wrote. “I have instructed the DOJ to immediately start looking into this. Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster tha

Oil extends decline as Trump accuses oil firms of 'gouging' consumers

U.S. President Donald Trump intensified pressure on oil companies to lower gasoline prices following the recent decline in crude.

Being over 50 in the job: When experience in the job suddenly no longer counts

It often happens that older employees feel ignored and less valued in the team. How those affected can address this intelligently without being sidelined.

ASML EUV in China? The rumour is ridiculed but it reveals a tougher reality on the ground

For anyone closely watching the semiconductor industry, the recent saga around ASML’s denial of possible EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography shipments to China, in an apparent response to US concern, may sound almost absurd at first. The machine at the centre of the discussion is not a laptop-sized piece of equipment that can be easily packed into a shipping carton. ASML’s EUV lithography systems weigh about 180 tonnes, contain a vast number of precision components, are shipped to customers in

As China plans for demographic crisis, some sectors see opportunity

As China moves towards becoming one of the world’s fastest-ageing economies – a trend causing worry over future productivity and a widening gulf between the country’s working and retired populations – Goldman Sachs said the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors could end up the biggest winners from the demographic divide, while carmakers and technology hardware manufacturers may see fiercer headwinds. Hong Kong and mainland China are both expected to enter the top 10 ranking for the world’s..

National security certification power won’t affect appeals: Hong Kong justice chief

As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. A new piece of subsidiary legislation that allows Hong Kong’s leader to certify a case as involving national security is unlikely to affect appeals, as the reclassification will not help authorities succeed in legal challenges, the justice chief has said. Secretary for Justice Paul

The Trillion-Dollar AI Shockwave Nobody Is Ready For

The biggest investment opportunity of the AI era has very little to do with software or chips. The market has already priced both. The real story is power: who owns it, where it sits and how cheaply it can be delivered to AI workloads at scale. A small data center company that almost no one on Wall Street has heard of just answered all three of those questions in front of the entire industry. In May 2026, Bitzero Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:AIBZ) signed a binding letter for a 15-year lease with OneQod

Why the Next Billion Barrels of Oil Demand Could Come From Storage

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the stranding of more than 10 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in the Persian Gulf was a wake-up call for import-dependent countries to expand their capacity to hold strategic and commercial reserves. Many countries, especially in the Asia Pacific, are looking to build new reserve capacity to boost their energy security and never again be caught off-guard by a massive supply disruption like the one triggered by the closure of the most important o

Interview: Governor of Kherson: “The Russians are intensifying their drone attacks”

Burning Russian oil facilities dominate the headlines, but the Russians are also increasing the pressure. The governor of Kherson reports how his city is holding up.

Trump Admin Takes Aim at Oil, Gas Drilling Costs

The U.S. federal government will reduce costs for oil and gas drillers by slashing red tape for the industry, aiming to tempt drillers to expand on federal lands. In a news release this week, the Interior Department said it would revise the Bureau of Land Management’s rule for federal land leasing for oil and gas drilling as well as the BLM’s waste prevention rule, by essentially loosening both to reduce the cost burden on energy companies. Under the revised rules, the cleanup cost of an abandon

Again, the worst form of the company pension scheme should fix everything

According to the Commission: In order to achieve a better overall level of care in old age, the goal must be to increase the prevalence of occupational pensions. In the future, the aim is to achieve almost universal distribution of company pension schemes for all employees. Then finally ensure that this is not implemented through deferred compensation, but rather through a real pension fund. The deferred compensation is just rubbish and that's why many people simply don't want to complete it: high fees, low fees

The AI Boom Is Set to Fast-Track China's Coming Nuclear Energy Dominance

The United States is still the largest producer of nuclear energy in the world – but probably not for long. Decades of political ambivalence have left the domestic nuclear sector in a state of neglect. Far more reactors are aging out than being constructed, and the country’s few attempts at building new nuclear fission reactors have been controversial, expensive, and slow to get off the ground. After Georgia’s Plant Vogtle finally came online years late and billions over budget in 2024, zero new

CFTC sues Kentucky over actions against prediction markets, making it first red state to face federal scrutiny

The commission has now sued nine states in total in its battle to defend what it sees as its exclusive right to regulate event contracts.

US Crude Oil Inventories Continue To Falter, SPR Struggling To Pick Up the Slack

The American Petroleum Institute (API) estimated that crude oil inventories in the United States fell by 765,000 barrels in the week ending June 19. In the week prior, US crude oil inventories fell by 8.33 million barrels. Although commercial crude oil inventories excluding the SPR have been falling rapidly for the last 2+ months, shedding 53 million barrels over the last ten weeks, US crude inventories are only down 2.1 million barrels so far this year, according to API data, kept in check by d

Pemex Wants Petrobras' Deepwater Magic

When you're drowning in debt, plagued by declining production, and running a refining business that seems chronically allergic to profits, buddying up with a more successful partner starts looking like a sound strategy. That's essentially what just happened between Mexico's Pemex and Brazil's Petrobras. The two state-controlled oil giants signed a memorandum of understanding this week to collaborate on exploration, production, refining, natural gas, petrochemicals, and more. But the headline ite

Oil tankers are being lured back into the Strait of Hormuz by big payouts

Big oil tankers are commanding $280,000 a day to head into the Persian Gulf to pick up cargoes, danger notwithstanding.

Crude Extends Losses

Oil prices fell as more tankers resumed transiting the Strait of Hormuz and additional supplies entered the market following the US-Iran interim peace deal.

SpaceX Taps Bond Market for $20 Billion to Fuel AI Expansion

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has begun selling investment grade bonds for the first time in what is anticipated to be a mass borrowing spree in order to fund the company’s ambitious AI plans following its blockbuster Nasdaq listing. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley are arranging calls with investors in a bid to provide temporary bridge financing for the satellite company, according to reports in Bloomberg. A bond offer is expected to follow this, with matur

Von der Leyen to meet Pashinyan in Yerevan after Armenia’s pro-EU vote

SS: Following Pashinyan's election win a few weeks ago, the promise of a rapprochement between the EU and the CSTO member-nation seems to be on track. The European Commission President is set to travel to Armenia next week to further develop strategic EU-Armenia relations. Von der Leyen’s visit will take place following a new announcement by the European Commission last Friday that it “disbursed €34 million to Armenia to help mitigate the impact of Russia's trade restrictions on the country's pr

China Eyes $2 Billion Uzbek Mining Bet as Central Asia Courtship Accelerates

The head of China’s National Energy Administration, Wang Hongzhi, visited Kazakhstan to participate in the inaugural meeting of the Kazakhstan-China Joint Working Group on Cooperation in Civil Nuclear Energy. Participants approved a protocol that defines future cooperation in the nuclear energy sphere, according to a Kazakh government statement, which offered no further details. Kazakhstan has selected China’s National Nuclear Corp. to build two large-scale reactors in the Central Asian nation.

Tanker Owners Are Having the Best Week of the Hormuz Crisis

The Strait of Hormuz may be reopening, but don't tell tanker owners the crisis is over. They're making too much money. As Middle Eastern producers scramble to move crude that has spent months stranded in the Persian Gulf, tanker rates have exploded higher, turning a slow return to normal into a windfall for shipping companies. According to Reuters, the cost of hiring a tanker in the Gulf has nearly doubled in just a week, jumping from around $106,000 per day to more than $190,000 per day. For so

Japan to consider economic security in M&A screenings

El Niño, War, and Fertilizer Costs Create a Dangerous Inflation Cocktail

Rory Green, TS Lombard's chief China economist, is the latest Wall Street strategist to warn of the mounting macro and food inflation risks that a super El Niño could release on certain regions of the world. In a note titled "Super El Niño: Famine Follows War?" Green warns that war-related disruptions to energy and fertilizer markets, compounded by adverse weather conditions, could create a perfect storm for global food prices. Green said, "In general, El Niño raises temperatures and significant

Pummelled by Ukraine, Russia says US hasn’t delivered on Trump-Putin ‘understandings’

Russia has accused the ⁠US of failing to deliver on “understandings” reached between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at a summit in Alaska last August, a shift that suggests growing frustration in Moscow. In the space of three days, three senior Russian officials have said, without providing specifics, that Washington has not followed through. Their comments follow an intensification of Ukraine’s drone strikes deep inside Russia – including two attacks last week on a Moscow oil...

Major pension reform: Merz thinks the Swedish pension is “brilliant”

What will become of the idea of ​​capital rent? Chancellor Merz astonishes with a personal confession. Bärbel Bas also supports the plan.

Saudi Arabia’s Decided Who Its Future Superpower Partner Is, And It’s Not the US

Since the replacement of Russia by China as the primary would-be superpower rival to the U.S., Saudi Arabia has sought to balance its relationships with Beijing and Washington -- sometimes leaning more one way, and sometimes the other. Until the 2014-2016 Oil Price War, the U.S. was the core relationship; after the war had finished, it was China and Russia; and then, from the start of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term in office, it was the U.S. again. However, in the aftermath of Operati