| Bloomberg Evening Briefing Asia |
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| India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani is caught in the crossfire of a bitter trade skirmish between the US and India. As President Donald Trump homed in on the South Asian nation’s purchases of Russian crude, his key advisers have accused the country’s most powerful tycoons of war profiteering. Though no names were mentioned, Ambani is unquestionably in the eye of the storm as his refining giant Reliance is the biggest single buyer of Russian oil in India. The public criticism is not just a personal affront. Tycoons like Ambani, who inherited a vast petrochemicals business from his father and turned it into an oil-to-telecoms powerhouse, are at the heart of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India. They are aligned with his nation-building priorities and have in turn benefited from government policies that shield industries key to them, including domestic retail, now in Trump’s sights. The attacks hit close to home, even if billionaire troubles have not generally affected the Indian leader, who has explicitly distanced himself during difficult periods. —Balázs Penz | |
What You Need to Know Today | |
| Russia is seeking to control Ukrainian territories it isn’t occupying, US Vice President JD Vance said. The negotiations over ending the war are focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and territory Russia wants to control, according to Vance. In an interview on Fox News, the vice president said he thought a meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders could help move the negotiations forward on their goals. | |
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| Senior employees of Singapore property conglomerate CapitaLand allegedly took bribes from a longtime contractor of its projects in India, according to a lawsuit filed in the city-state. The bribery allegations surfaced in a recent civil case brought by a Singapore construction company against a former director who oversaw its India investments. CapitaLand isn’t a party to the lawsuit, but the company is mentioned in court documents from both sides. The company said that the matter “is related to a past incident involving former employees.” | |
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| One of Taiwan’s largest pension funds has guided outside firms against using Hong Kong-registered entities to manage its money, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring the geopolitical challenges facing the financial hub as it deepens ties with mainland China. The Bureau of Labor Funds, which manages about $235.2 billion, has been verbally asking third-party managers to exclude Hong Kong entities from its contracts since last year, the people said.  The Taipei skyline. Photographer: Maurice Tsai/ | |
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| Australia’s biggest bank reversed a decision to cut 45 customer service roles due to new artificial intelligence technology after pressure from the country’s main financial services union. The union said it took Commonwealth Bank of Australia to the workplace relations tribunal this month as the company wasn’t being transparent about call volumes. CBA had said that the voice bot reduced call volumes by 2,000 a week, when union members said volumes were in fact rising and the lender had to offer staff overtime and direct team leaders to answer calls, the union said. | |
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| Tencent’s Valorant made a strong debut on mobile this week, earning $1 million in gross player spending on iPhones on its first day out in China. The colorful shooting game, first released on PC in 2020, is one of the company’s big mobile launches this year, closely watched as an indicator of the company’s strategy to sustain what it calls evergreen franchises. It had roughly 170,000 downloads on day one, about as many as Tencent’s DnF Mobile a year earlier, and remains No.1 in downloads among all iPhone apps, according to Appfigures data.  ‘Valorant’ Source: Riot Games | |
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| North Korea has quietly built and operated a sprawling long-range missile base near the Chinese border, which stores Kim Jong Un’s most advanced strategic weapons, according to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The base located 27 kilometers (17 miles) from the border demonstrates the regime’s efforts to advance its nuclear strike capabilities, the think tank said. It likely houses a brigade-sized unit equipped with six to nine nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles and their mobile launchers, the report showed Wednesday. | |
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| Seven & i’s market value dipped below Aeon for the first time in two decades, as shares in the operator of 7-Eleven stores languish after Couche-Tard Inc. abandoned its bid for the company. Aeon, Japan’s second-biggest grocery conglomerate, reached a market capitalization of $35.2 billion at the close of trading in Tokyo, edging slightly past Seven & i’s for the first time since the company adopted a holding structure. | |
What You’ll Need to Know Tomorrow | |
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| Between an abandoned market and a rusty, decades-old electrical substation in a rundown part of Liverpool sit two buildings with a shiny coat of white paint behind a high-security fence. This ordinary-looking site is considered “critical national infrastructure” because of what’s inside: two 95-ton cylinders with rotors turning 1,500 times per minute. It’s called a synchronous compensator, and it’s northwest England’s best hope of avoiding blackouts. “If Spain had enough of these machines, the countrywide blackout could have been avoided,” says Guy Nicholson, who works for the Norwegian power company that keeps the rotors running at a fixed speed. He’s referring to the April afternoon when solar farm outages destabilized Spain’s grid, and there weren’t enough gas plants online to provide stability. Synchronous compensators could have kept clean power flowing at the right frequency and voltage, avoiding the blackout. But continental Spain doesn't have any. Read more.  The bars of a stator housing are installed in the winding shop, where further work steps also are carried out. Photographer: Fabien Ritter/Bloomberg | |
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