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Asia-Pacific
The Straits Times

S’pore banks hit record highs, DBS tops $70 for the first time

Analysts expect strong wealth management momentum and attractive dividend yields to continue underpinning bank share prices. SINGAPORE – Shares of Singapore’s three banks climbed to record highs this week, buoyed by expectations that interest rates will stay higher for longer and growing investor optimism ahead of the banks’ second-quarter earnings reports in early August. DBS Bank punched through the $70 mark for the first time on July 9 and ended the week up 5.7 per cent at $70.45. OCBC Bank broke through $27 and closed 8.46 per cent higher at $27.43, while UOB surpassed $44 and finished the week up 10.12 per cent at $44.38. Analysts said they expect strong wealth management momentum and attractive dividend yields to continue underpinning bank share prices. Investor interest could also receive a further boost after the Singapore Exchange said on July 1 that it would cut the standard board-lot size from 100 units to 10 units for stocks priced between $10 and $100, including the three local banks. Meanwhile, shares of Singapore Airlines briefly retreated after renewed US-Iran tensions triggered swings in oil prices, but still finished the week up 1.31 per cent at $7.71. But the pullback in the national carrier as well as other oil-sensitive counters did little to dent improving sentiment in the broader market, with the Straits Times Index (STI) ending the week 4.29 per cent higher at 5,469.29. “This selective reaction stands in contrast to episodes in the previous months when geopolitical tensions weighed more broadly on the STI and regional peers,” said James Ooi, market strategist at Tiger Brokers. “Investors have likely grown fatigued and desensitised to the repeated cycles of escalation and de-escalation, and are now focusing more on local developments and underlying company fundamentals rather than recurring geopolitical headlines,” he added. Gold prices recently rebounded from lows near US$4,000 an ounce compared with their January peak above US$5,000, after a weaker-than-expected US jobs report for the month of June eased expectations of further Federal Reserve rate hikes. Lower interest rate expectations tend to support gold because the precious metal does not pay interest, making it relatively more attractive when yields on competing assets are expected to remain lower. Still, gold lost some ground through the week as inflation fears grew after US President Donald Trump said that the ceasefire between the US and Iran was over.

S’pore banks hit record highs, DBS tops $70 for the first time
Europe
BBC Business

Life of Sizewell B extended by another 20 years

A nuclear power plant on the East Coast will produce electricity for a further 20 years after a deal was reached between its owner EDF and the government. Sizewell B, near Leiston, Suffolk, started operating in 1995 and was due to reach the end of its life in 2035, but will now continue operating until 2055. Robert Gunn, station director of Sizewell B, said the deal would ensure hundreds of jobs were safeguarded. But Chris Wilson, from the campaign group Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), said future generations would be left dealing with the financial and environmental impact. EDF runs Sizewell B and employs 620 staff and about 300 contractors at the plant. The agreement will enable about £800m of plant investment by EDF, with the agreement due to be finalised later in the year. Sizewell B is the country's only pressurised water reactor and provides energy to more than two million homes, producing 3% of the UK's energy. According to EDF, the extension to its life would generate enough electricity to meet the needs of every home in East Anglia for almost 45 years. "Securing another 20 years also safeguards existing jobs and allows us to continue to recruit another generation of Suffolk young people for the nation's nuclear renaissance," he added. The government has described keeping the plant open until 2055 as "good news", while Lord Patrick Vallance, minister for science, innovation, research and nuclear, said extending the life of a nuclear plant was a " normal thing to do". Wilson said TASC applauded the goal to phase out fossil fuels, but condemned "the government's continued reliance on dirty and dangerous nuclear power". He said this created a "multi-generational financial and environmental liability", leaving our descendants with years of flood defence maintenance and the "insurmountable challenge of safe, millennia-long, highly radioactive nuclear waste isolation, amid a changing climate".

Life of Sizewell B extended by another 20 years
Asia-Pacific
The Straits Times

Wall Street ends higher as investors turn to earnings season

NEW YORK - The S&P 500 rose to end just short of a record high on July 10, as a blockbuster Nasdaq debut of South Korea’s SK Hynix fuelled optimism about memory-chip makers, while investors looked ahead to quarterly earnings season kicking off next week. The artificial intelligence trade returned to the spotlight after SK Hynix ended 13 per cent above its offering price at US$170 in a high-profile US listing. The semiconductor company raised over US$26 billion (S$33.6 billion) on July 9 by selling American Depositary Receipts priced at US$149 each. US stocks added to gains after US President Donald Trump said that Iran had asked to continue talks and the US had agreed, but that the June ceasefire was “over.” Attacks between the US and Iran this week revived concerns that high energy prices could fuel more inflation and force the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates. Reports from big US banks will kick off the second-quarter earnings season next week. Analysts are expecting S&P 500 earnings to surge 24 per cent from a year earlier, with technology companies driving much of the growth, according to LSEG I/B/E/S. “This is a high-bar quarter with a narrow margin of error,” said Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at US Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis, Minnesota. “The banks will give us a good read on the underlying economic strength and what consumers and businesses are doing.” Thanks to increased corporate profit estimates, the S&P 500 is trading at about 20 times expected earnings, down from an earnings multiple of 21 in late May, even though the benchmark is trading near record highs. Chipmakers have been among the biggest beneficiaries of this year’s AI-driven rally, fuelled by expectations of heavy spending by hyperscalers. But concerns over stretched valuations and profit taking have recently injected volatility into the sector. The S&P 500 climbed 0.42 per cent to end the session at 7,575.39 points. It remains down 0.45% from its June 2 record-high close. The Nasdaq gained 0.29 per cent to 26,281.61 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.29 per cent to 52,637.01 points.

Wall Street ends higher as investors turn to earnings season
Europe
BBC Business

Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring

On a tree-lined street in the affluent Duboce Triangle residential neighbourhood of San Francisco, the top half of a white, Edwardian-era, detached house was drawing visitors from prospective buyers. The opulently renovated three-bedroom apartment was on the market for almost $3m (£2.3m). And it had been attracting increased attention due to an unusual payment possibility - the seller would consider shares in artificial intelligence companies OpenAI or Anthropic instead of cash. "The value [of the property] is questionable, but I would like to buy," says a young OpenAI employee who has just viewed the flat with his partner. The worker, who moved to the Californian city two years ago for a technical job with the San Francisco-based company, is currently renting. He plans, he says, to ask his bosses about the stock transfer possibility. Welcome to San Francisco 2026, also home to fellow AI giant Anthropic. The city is ground zero for the AI revolution, and its property prices have risen dramatically this year. "They are just astronomical," says Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, a real estate company that tracks US home prices. "People are flush with cash and ready to buy." In March, San Francisco regained its title as the most expensive city for homebuyers in the US, overtaking rival San Jose 50 miles to the south in the heart of traditional Silicon Valley. That month, the median house price in San Francisco rose 19% on the year before, and that trend has continued, up 14.5% and 14.1% in April and May respectively, according to data provided by Redfin. The median sale price in the city as of May 2026 is a record high of $1.76m, compared with nearly $400,000 for the US as a whole, where prices rose by just 1.4% in March, and 2% in both April and May. The prevailing view of pretty much everyone is that AI money is the driver of the red-hot San Francisco property market. "We have come to that conclusion based on what we're seeing in the data, and what we've heard from our agents," says Fairweather. She highlights the steep jump in prices, external in the wider San Francisco Bay Area's luxury zip codes – which includes Duboce Triangle – since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, a trend absent in cities with less AI wealth. It has halted the downturn that San Francisco saw during the Covid pandemic, when the population fell and house prices softened.

Wealthy AI workers send San Francisco house prices soaring
Europe
BBC Business

I run the UK's biggest bank, here are five ways to manage your money

Charlie Nunn is CEO of Lloyds Banking Group - the UK's biggest bank providing one in four current accounts - meaning he has a deep insight into customers' spending, saving and borrowing. Here are his top tips on how to manage your money from saving to avoiding scams. This means regular saving will stop being a decision or action you have to keep taking - and putting off. "If you're able to carve out a little bit and put it somewhere else where you won't have access to it and be able to spend it, I think that's the easiest way to start having a saving mindset," he says. That could mean setting up a direct debit from your current account to a savings account, organising cash into different envelopes or using round-up tools that put spare change aside when you spend. He admits he "hates budgeting and always has" so he says he looks at his current account as soon as he gets paid and decides how much he wants to move into savings. "Do it as soon as you can," he adds. As well as savings, he recommends having an emergency fund for surprise bills like a broken boiler or car repairs. How much you need in the fund depends on your circumstances but he advises having one to three months' salary set aside if you can. Nunn and his wife use a joint account and have "complete transparency" over money, he says. His red flag in a relationship is "someone who isn't careful with money" because he has always been "relatively prudent". His attitude to money was shaped by childhood - his parents divorced and his mother raised four children which meant he grew up thinking carefully about spending. "We were constantly worrying about what we were spending money on and managing money carefully which ranged from looking for cheap food in the supermarket to thinking carefully about holidays and what we did in our spare time". Nunn says his children "take no advice from me because I'm their dad" but he's tried to make them understand the value of money.

I run the UK's biggest bank, here are five ways to manage your money
Europe
BBC Business

Why electric cars cost more to insure - and what's being done about it

ByTheo LeggettInternational Business CorrespondentPublished4 hours agoIt's hot and bright beneath the high intensity lights in a cavernous crash and safety testing laboratory, hidden away in a business park outside Newbury. A siren blares and a disembodied voice counts down: "Three, two, one". A small white car trundles into view, rolls across the floor, and bumps into a barrier set against the wall. As crash tests go, this one is hardly spectacular. There is no torn metal or flying glass. At just 6mph, it replicates the kind of annoying prang you might well get in a car park or at a traffic light. But raise the slightly bent bonnet to look underneath, and it's a different story. This is an electric vehicle (EV) – a Dacia Spring – and the hidden damage is significant. As senior test engineer Sean Hoad points out, the high-voltage charging port, mounted at the front of the car is badly broken, as are components it's attached to. "This is all one big unit, meaning we can't just replace the front charge port. We have to replace the charger itself, the inverter, and some of the cabling", he explains. Repairing all of that, he says, would cost about £4,000, and there is other damage to consider as well, so the chances are an insurer would not bother getting it fixed. Thatcham Research, which works on behalf of the insurance industry, is carrying out tests like this to understand why EVs typically attract higher insurance premiums. On average, it says, EVs cost 30% more to repair than petrol or diesel models, and it takes 14% longer to fix them. This then feeds through to the insurance price. It can cost 10-25% more to insure an EV than a petrol or diesel car, depending on the make and model. According to the latest data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), EV sales have surged to the point that they made up almost one in every three new cars sold in the UK in June, external. Ian Plummer, chief customer officer of car selling website Autotrader, says the rising EV demand is "driven by intensifying competition and rising consumer interest in plug-in cars".

Why electric cars cost more to insure - and what's being done about it
Europe
BBC Business

Online marketplaces still selling dozens of unsafe baby products, Which? finds

Image source, Getty ImagesByVicky WongPublished8 July 2026Potentially dangerous baby products - including self-feeding devices, pillows and sleeping bags - are still being sold on online marketplaces in the UK, according to Which?. The consumer group found 150 such products listed for sale by third parties on sites like Amazon, eBay and TikTok - despite having been subject to official safety warnings and product recalls. Sue Davies, the head of consumer protection policy at Which?, said the investigation had shown "how easy it is to find these unsafe products" and urged the government to make marketplaces liable for the safety of items sold on their sites. Most of the companies concerned said they have removed some of the products Which? had flagged. The investigation looked at three types of products - sleeping bags, self-feeders and sleep pillows - that have been the subject of warnings from the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS). It found unsafe products were listed on eight online marketplaces - Alibaba, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, TikTok, OnBuy and Wish. Of the 150 unsafe products it found, more than a third were designed to feed a baby from a bottle with little or no assistance despite an "obvious" risk of choking, Which? said. Thirty-three involved a long straw design and 21 were pillow bottle-holders designed to fasten around a baby's neck. These bottle-feeders were available on several platforms despite an OPSS alert from 2022 calling on businesses to remove such products. The probe also found 59 sleeping bags with hoods or without armholes and 37 sleep pillows marketed for newborns, despite concerns about suffocation and overheating, as well as NHS safe sleep guidance. OPSS also issued an alert for baby sleep pillows - some of which have been marketed with claims of improving night-time sleep - in December 2025. Davies said: "The lives of babies are at risk because these platforms won't stop dangerous products from reaching their customers - even though they are well aware that these products can be deadly."

Online marketplaces still selling dozens of unsafe baby products, Which? finds
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

US attacks Iran over ship being hit in Strait of Hormuz; Tehran lashes out again at Gulf Arab states

The United States attacked Iran early Sunday morning over an Iranian attack on a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, setting the container ship ablaze and forcing its crew to abandon it. Iran apparently responded with strikes targeting Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The new crossfire in the Persian Gulf comes after US President Donald Trump suggested an interim deal and ceasefire in the Iran war was “over.” US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote online: “Iran made a poor choice. Now they pay.” The United Arab Emirates warned the public Sunday of an incoming missile and drone attack as explosions could be heard in nearby Qatar. A missile alert sounded in Qatar shortly after the blasts. Qatar's military said in a statement it intercepted the incoming Iranian fire. Meanwhile, missile alerts sounded in Bahrain, an island kingdom in the Persian Gulf home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet. It wasn't immediately clear what locations were under attack in the UAE, which so far hadn't been targeted in the latest round of attacks by Iran. In the Strait of Hormuz attack, a Cyprus-flagged container ship was hit by Iran and suffered “significant engineroom damage” and a civilian crew member is missing, US Central Command said. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre, overseen by the British military, said the ship had been travelling in a route hugging the shoreline of Oman. That's been the way ships have gotten in and out of the Persian Gulf while avoiding Iranian territorial waters. The ship's crew abandoned the vessel as it was ablaze, the centre said. Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said multiple vessels “disregarded our warnings and instructions to correct their course and proceed along the approved route.” One of them “was struck by a warning shot and brought to a stop.” Iran said that the strait would remain closed “until further notice” and said it would consider targeting “additional enemy bases in the region” if it faced more attacks. (AP) RD RD Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

US attacks Iran over ship being hit in Strait of Hormuz; Tehran lashes out again at Gulf Arab states
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Iran says Strait of Hormuz is closed after striking vessel using ‘unauthorised route’

Iran has declared the Strait of Hormuz closed once again after a vessel using an unauthorised route was hit by a warning shot, intensifying tensions despite a fragile ceasefire with the United States. (a file picture) | Photo Credit: KIM SOO-HYEON Iran said it considers the Strait of Hormuz closed once again after a vessel using an unauthorised route was struck by a warning shot in the critical waterway, further jeopardising the already tenuous ceasefire agreement with the United States. The White House and US military officials offered no immediate comment on the closure, nor did they say whether American retaliation could be coming. The announcement followed Iran and Oman's foreign ministers meeting on Saturday to discuss the strait that lies between them, after days of Iranian attacks on ships and U.S. retaliation that dealt a blow to the interim deal to end the war. Iran's new supreme leader, still unseen since the war began, vowed in his first statement since the funeral of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Iranians would avenge his killing in the war's opening strikes on February 28. Such revenge “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out,” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a statement carried on state television, hours after US President Donald Trump threatened more missile attacks. Oman said it and Iran agreed to keep talking about the Strait of Hormuz “at the technical and political levels,” a day after the United States called on Iran to publicly say the crucial waterway is open and ships won't be attacked. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he met with his counterpart in Oman to discuss “appropriate mechanisms for ensuring the safe passage of ships.” The world for decades has considered the strait an international waterway. Iran has insisted that the strait now remain under its control and that it be allowed to charge ships moving through it, a stance it took after the war began. The US urges mariners to transit on a southern route through Oman's territorial waters. About a fifth of all traded oil and natural gas passed through the strait before the war began. Iran's grip on it during the war led to a global energy crisis, though oil prices have sharply dropped since wartime highs of USD 120 a barrel. Iran's top diplomat also accused the US of violating the interim deal by ending waivers allowing Iran to sell crude oil on the open market in US dollars. Washington ended them in response to the attacks on ships in the strait. A thousand "missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat," Trump wrote on social media overnight He said he was responding to threats "to assassinate, or attempt to assassinate" him. During Khamenei's funeral, mourners held posters or banners calling for Trump to be killed along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has declared the ceasefire over but said the US would continue negotiations.

Iran says Strait of Hormuz is closed after striking vessel using ‘unauthorised route’