Business

LONDON — AstraZeneca investors punished the pharmaceutical firm on Monday over reports of merger talks with US rival Bristol Myers Squibb that could make one of the world’s biggest drugmakers with a combined value of nearly $400 billion. Shares in AstraZeneca closed down some 9 percent, the biggest drop since …

SINGAPORE’S Grab raised its annual revenue and profit forecasts on Tuesday, encouraged by strong demand for its ride-hailing and delivery services driven by promotional offers, driver incentives and its artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. The upbeat projections and a new $750-million share buyback program pushed shares of the Nasdaq-listed company up …

TOKYO — Japanese car giant Toyota on Tuesday raised its full-year profit forecasts on the back of the weak yen, days after Tokyo and Washington moved to boost the beleaguered currency. The world’s largest automaker by sales said the decision reflected “changes in the external environment such as foreign exchange …

TOKYO — Toyota is forecast to post a fifth straight quarterly operating profit decline this week, hit by weaker vehicle sales and rising costs, as investors gauge the impact of last week’s earthquake in southern Japan. The world’s biggest automaker is expected to report 1.11 trillion yen ($7.04 billion) in …

BEIJING — A version of Chinese startup DeepSeek’s flagship artificial intelligence (AI) model is by far the least expensive to run on benchmark tests among well-known models globally and more than 100 times cheaper to run than Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5, according to a research firm. DeepSeek, which sources have …

SHELL is selling its onshore European renewables unit to TotalEnergies, the companies said Monday, as the British oil major continues to scale back its low-carbon investments to focus on upstream operations and trading. Shell said the deal agreed with TotalEnergies includes assets across Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, …

RAM (random access memory) chips and NVRAM (non-volatile random access memory) chips are seen for sale in a computer centre in Hong Kong on July 28, 2026 (Image: AFP) HONG KONG — Printouts of articles about the global memory chip shortage are pinned beside a price list at a Hong …

Japan’s prime minister Sanae Takaichi met President Trump in March [Bloomberg via Getty Images]  TOKYO — Washington and Tokyo jointly intervened to shore up the Japanese yen for the first time in nearly 30 years after the currency sank to its weakest level in decades, the Financial Times (FT) has …

Photo Credit: dailyasianage.com) VILNIUS, Lithuania — Stepping into the newly renovated Vilnius airport, visitors are greeted with a slew of billboards advertising products “Made in Lithuania,” including cybersecurity giant NordVPN. Rather than focusing on heritage or artisanal craftsmanship promoted in similar campaigns in Italy or France, Lithuania and its Baltic …

Telecommunications companies PLDT Inc., Globe Telecom Inc. and Converge ICT Solutions Inc. plan to jointly invest about $500 million to build a nationwide domestic submarine cable network, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said. DICT Secretary Henry Aguda said the project would establish an extensive undersea fiber optic …