World News by Wild Rose

A fundraiser to help pay disgraced former leader Najib Razak’s 50 million ringgit (US$12.3 million) fine has become a lightning rod for insults and mockery, as Malaysians continue to pile criticism on a decision last week to allow him to spend the rest of his jail sentence under house arrest. King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar last Friday granted Najib a “conditional pardon”, which will allow the jailed ex-prime minister to complete his term in the comfort of his home – provided he first pays off his...

Mainland China’s stock exchanges have stepped up lobbying of companies and regulators to prioritise domestic listings after Hong Kong stole their thunder in fundraising activities in recent years, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The domestic exchanges recently met representatives of some mainland companies planning Hong Kong listings, especially first-time issuers and firms in sectors supported by national policies, a source said. “Exchanges emphasised the benefits of listing...

China is seeing a fresh fundraising boom for AI drug developers, with start-ups including a ByteDance spin-off raising hundreds of millions of dollars this week as investors rush to back domestic challengers to Anthropic and Isomorphic Labs. Anew Labs, a Shanghai-based AI drug discovery firm that was formerly a unit of Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has raised US$290 million at a valuation of US$1.5 billion, according to an informed source. Investors included prominent venture capital firms such...

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Kaszek led a 360m real round. Launch has slipped to the second quarter of 2027, and the regulatory position is unstated. The post The A5X Funding Round Raised About US$70 Million to Challenge B3 in Derivatives, Not Equities appeared first on The Rio Times.

Hong Kong is intensifying efforts to attract technology start-ups and nurture unicorns through expanded financial support via a key government-backed platform, leveraging the city’s booming fundraising activities and world-class financial infrastructure. Investors are displaying an increased appetite for the local tech scene compared with a decade ago – a trend that Terry Wong Ping-sau, CEO of the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), said was a positive sign for the city’s...

Z.ai, the Chinese artificial intelligence model developer listed in Hong Kong, is seeking to raise about HK$15.7 billion (US$2 billion) through a placement of roughly 21.97 million new H shares at HK$714 apiece, according to a company filing on Sunday. The company also announced a 20.14 billion yuan (US$3 billion) convertible-bond sale, according to its filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange. Z.ai, also known as Zhipu AI, closed at HK$793 on Friday, down 73 per cent from its intraday high of...

Kazakhstan’s businesses should prioritise long-term fundraising ambitions rather than quick wins in the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese markets, the managing director of the Central Asian country’s sovereign wealth fund has said. Saltanat Satzhan, managing director for development and privatisation at sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna, said she also aimed to list state-owned rail operator Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ) in Hong Kong by the end of the year. KTZ, wholly owned by the government...

Overseas investors are returning as the group steps up its expansion plans.

Ferrexpo Plc, an iron ore miner in Ukraine working to stave off insolvency, raised about $100 million from investors through a long-awaited fundraising program that it had called essential for its continued survival.

CVC Capital Partners Plc raised $10 billion for its latest secondaries fund, the largest pool it has ever amassed for buying and selling private equity assets on the second-hand market.

A woman in China, suffering from severe scoliosis, has gone viral after accusations that she is “making money by doing nothing” surfaced. This scrutiny followed the revelation that her boyfriend, Yan Ruize, worked gruelling food-delivery shifts to fund her much-needed surgery. He Ling, 23, hails from southwest China’s Sichuan province and was diagnosed with congenital scoliosis – a sideways curvature of the spine – at five years old. Now, at just 1.35 metres tall and weighing 31.5kg, she...