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(Bloomberg) -- A rally in Malaysian builders is gathering pace in the wake of more contract wins and a revival in mega infrastructure projects in the country.Kerjaya Prospek Group Bhd., one of Malaysia’s biggest contractors, said Friday it won its first job of 2021, sending its shares to a 20-month high this week. TCS Group Holdings Bhd. said that same day it secured its maiden infrastructure job linked to an expressway project. A gauge of 51 builders is up 16% from a Feb. 3 low, trouncing the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index.Record-low interest rates and signs of government pump-priming has brought relief to the industry hit by the global pandemic and political turmoil from a change in government last year. The administration surprised analysts earlier this month when it said work on phase three of the Mass Rapid Transit project will start in the second half of 2021, sooner than expected. Details of another rail project costing 50 billion ringgit ($12 billion) have also been firmed up.Read: Malaysia Seeks Up to 30% Private Funding For MRT3 Project: Kini“Robust spending on infra will benefit related sectors such as transportation, power and building materials, as well as related services such as engineering and financial,” said Danny Wong, chief executive officer of Areca Capital Sdn. The firm had about 1.73 billion ringgit in assets as of April last year, according to its website.Malaysia set aside a record 69 billion ringgit ($17 billion) for development expenditure in its 2021 budget.‘Progressing Fast’Beneficiaries from the MRT3 project that’s now estimated to cost 32.9 billion ringgit and span a longer 50 kilometers include Gamuda Bhd., IJM Corp., Kimlun Corp. and Malaysian Resources Corp., Lum Joe Shen, an analyst at Kenanga Research, wrote in a note Wednesday.“We are net positive on the new details as behind-the-scene progress is picking up fast,” Lum said.Construction companies’ shares had been laggards because of overhangs including the political uncertainty and looming general elections, according to a April 2 report by Kenanga Research. The sector should be able to sustain its upward trajectory, albeit in a “choppy fashion,” it said.“The market is gradually recovering and there’s pent-up demand for properties backed by the low-interest rate environment,” Kerjaya’s Executive Chairman Tee Eng Ho said in a statement, after winning a 153.5 million ringgit contract linked to one of the largest mixed developments in Kuala Lumpur.(Updates with more analyst comments.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- For decades, it’s been an article of faith in China’s credit market: Companies controlled by the central government will get bailed out if they ever run into trouble.Now investors aren’t so sure.Mounting concern about the financial health of China Huarong Asset Management Co. -- a distressed-debt manager controlled by the country’s finance ministry -- has fueled a record tumble in the company’s dollar bonds that’s stoking fears of market contagion.While China Huarong has said it has access to liquidity and is making payments on time, bond prices suggest investors are bracing for a potential restructuring that would be the country’s most consequential since the financial crisis that gave rise to China Huarong and other bad-debt managers in the late 1990s.Whether or not that comes to pass, the selloff underscores a historic shift in the world’s second-largest credit market. As Chinese President Xi Jinping dials back support for weaker borrowers to reduce moral hazard, state-owned enterprises have replaced their private counterparts as the country’s biggest source of defaults.SOEs reneged on a record 79.5 billion yuan ($12.1 billion) of local bonds in 2020, lifting their share of onshore payment failures to 57% from 8.5% a year earlier, according to Fitch Ratings. The figure jumped to 72% in the first quarter of 2021.The big question now confronting investors is how much pain China’s government is willing to tolerate as it tries to wean the bond market off implicit guarantees. None of the state-owned companies that have defaulted so far -- including Peking University Founder Group Corp., which is ultimately controlled by China’s education ministry -- were considered as systemically important as China Huarong.Chinese authorities have tried to strike a balance between instilling more market discipline and avoiding a sudden loss of confidence that might spiral into a crisis. But the tumult surrounding China Huarong, some of whose bonds are now trading below 80 cents on the dollar, highlights how quickly investor sentiment can deteriorate even at a time when the economy is strengthening.“China’s credit market is entering a new era as SOEs are emerging as the main source of stress,” said Shuncheng Zhang, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. Whatever the outcome for China Huarong, policy makers will likely allow more defaults in the state sector to reduce moral hazard and cultivate a more mature debt market, he added.The stakes are high as Beijing considers which companies to support. SOEs had the equivalent of $3 trillion in onshore bonds outstanding at the end of last year, or 91% of the total, data compiled by Fitch show. A small but growing portion of those bonds is now owned by international money managers, after a steady relaxation of China’s restrictions on foreign investment in recent years.While the speed of China Huarong’s debt rout has jolted some investors, the company has long been a source of potential risk. Its former chairman, Lai Xiaomin, was executed earlier this year for bribery. Under his leadership, China Huarong expanded into areas including securities trading and trusts that were a significant departure from the company’s original mandate of helping banks dispose of bad debt.This month’s selloff was triggered by China Huarong’s failure to publish 2020 preliminary earnings by a March 31 deadline, which business publication Caixin reported was due to a significant financial restructuring.Losses in the bonds accelerated on Tuesday -- spreading to other Chinese issuers including property developers -- as traders circulated a separate Caixin report discussing scenarios for China Huarong that included bankruptcy. The company is still considered investment grade by Fitch, Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings, though all three have said they will review their ratings for a potential downgrade.It’s not the first time Beijing has grappled with the risk of credit-market contagion. A surprise onshore default by a state-linked coal producer in November triggered a brief selloff as investors reassessed the creditworthiness of investment-grade Chinese debt. Further defaults, including by prominent chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroup Co., also caused short-term market ructions but never came close to precipitating a crisis.Some level of contagion is actually healthy for China’s bond market as it shows investors are responding to changing levels of risk, according to Charles Chang, an analyst at S&P Global. He said recent SOE defaults have triggered a stronger reaction in bonds of peers than was the case a few years ago.“The new thinking is that as long as it doesn’t cause systemic risk, there isn’t necessarily a need for a bailout,” said Ivan Chung, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. “More SOE defaults are expected to occur in the future but they will likely be concentrated in fiscally weaker regions and sectors with heavy legacy debt and labor burdens.”It’s unclear whether Chinese leaders have discussed the fate of China Huarong’s bondholders, but there are signs authorities might be preparing to provide support to the company if needed.The finance ministry is considering transferring its controlling stake in China Huarong to a unit of the nation’s sovereign wealth fund that has more experience resolving debt risks, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. The finance ministry aims to complete a transfer in the next few months, though any final decisions will require approval from China’s State Council, the person said.“The transfer, if realized, may offer more flexibility in financial support to Huarong,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Dan Wang. “But it also indicates that Huarong’s debt risk may be much higher than the market had previously expected.”(Corrects spelling of Huarong in 12th paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
The truck driver was short on sleep and high on drugs when he crashed his semi-trailer into the group of police officers on the side of the road.
Brazil's Senate on Tuesday launched a probe into President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The congressional investigation, known by its Portuguese acronym as a CPI, can result in a number of actions, including the referral of possible wrongdoing to law enforcement. In practice, the inquiry is a political headache for Bolsonaro, who is already facing record disapproval amid Brazil's worst coronavirus wave.
(Bloomberg) -- Most Asian stocks climbed in early trade following gains in U.S. equities and bonds, as investors shrugged off a higher-than-forecast rise in U.S. inflation to focus on the path of the global recovery.Hong Kong’s benchmark rose and tech stocks lifted China, but shares dipped in Japan amid concerns a slow vaccine rollout will crimp activity. U.S. equity futures were steady following another all-time high for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes, as the White House said the U.S. inoculation campaign remains on track despite a pause in Johnson & Johnson doses amid health concerns.Treasuries held gains after a successful sale of 30-year bonds, which settled fears of poor demand sparking another bout of volatility. The U.S. dollar retained the prior session’s losses.Traders are watching for any further tremors in Asia’s credit markets, after a sharp selloff in one of China’s largest bad-debt managers raised questions about other heavily leveraged borrowers.The latest data showing U.S. consumer prices rose more than expected last month have had little impact given the distortions surrounding the year-earlier collapse in price pressures. Investors still appear confident that the recovery remains on track with support from central banks and government spending.“A lot of growth and inflation have already been priced into the market,” said Emily Roland, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management. “It’s almost as if you need to exceed those expectations in order to see a more pronounced reaction from markets.”Runaway inflation, along with higher borrowing costs and taxes, have replaced the pandemic as the top concerns for global fund managers, according to the latest Bank of America Corp. survey.Meanwhile, Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high, and the Nasdaq set a reference price of $250 for the direct listing of Coinbase Global Inc., the cryptocurrency exchange that will start trading Wednesday. Oil traded above $60 a barrel.Some key events to watch this week:Banks and financial firms begin reporting first-quarter earnings, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.Economic Club of Washington hosts Fed Chair Jerome Powell for a moderated Q&A on Wednesday.U.S. Federal Reserve releases Beige Book on Wednesday.U.S. data including initial jobless claims, industrial production and retail sales come Thursday.China economic growth, industrial production and retail sales figures are on Friday.These are some of the main moves in financial markets:StocksS&P 500 futures were flat as of 10:46 a.m. in Tokyo. The index closed 0.3% higher.Japan’s Topix Index was 0.3% lower.The Shanghai Composite was up 0.4%.The Hang Seng rose 1.4%.South Korea’s Kospi Index was flat.Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index was 0.5% higher.CurrenciesThe Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed.The yen was up 0.2% at 108.86 per dollar.The euro was at $1.1959.The offshore yuan traded around 6.5398 per dollar.BondsThe yield on 10-year Treasuries held at 1.61% after slipping in U.S. trade.Australia’s 10-year yield was seven basis points lower at 1.75%.CommoditiesWest Texas Intermediate crude rose 0.6% to $60.56 a barrel.Gold was at $1,746.28 an ounce.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
BASEL, Switzerland, April 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a press release issued under the same headline earlier today by VectivBio Holding AG (Nasdaq: VECT), please note that in the first sentence of the first paragraph, the figure of the additional ordinary shares should be 1,125,000, not 1,250,000. The corrected release follows: VectivBio Holding AG, (“Vectiv” or “VectivBio”) (Nasdaq: VECT), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative treatments for severe rare conditions for which there is a significant unmet medical need, today announced the closing of its initial public offering of 8,625,000 ordinary shares, which includes the full exercise of the underwriters’ option to purchase an additional 1,125,000 ordinary shares, at a public offering price of $17.00 per share. The gross proceeds from the offering were approximately $146.6 million. Vectiv’s ordinary shares began trading on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “VECT” on April 9, 2021. All of the ordinary shares were offered by Vectiv. BofA Securities, SVB Leerink and Credit Suisse acted as joint book-running managers for the offering. LifeSci Capital also acted as an underwriter for the offering. The offering was made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the final prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from: may be obtained from BofA Securities, Attention: Prospectus Department, NC1-004-03-43, 200 North College Street, 3rd Floor, Charlotte, NC 28255-0001, or by telephone at (800) 294-1322, or by email at dg.prospectus_requests@bofa.com; SVB Leerink LLC, Attention: Syndicate Department, One Federal Street, 37th Floor, Boston, MA 02110, or by telephone at (800) 808-7525 ext. 6105 or by email at syndicate@svbleerink.com; or Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC Attention: Prospectus Department, 6933 Louis Stephens Drive, Morrisville, NC 27560, or by telephone at (800) 221-1037 or by email at usa.prospectus@credit-suisse.com. A registration statement relating to these securities was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on April 8, 2021. Copies of the registration statement can be accessed by visiting the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. About VectivBio VectivBio (Nasdaq:VECT) is a global, clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative treatments for severe rare conditions with high unmet medical need. The company is committed to pursuing product candidates with a clear mechanism of action and the potential to meaningfully transform and improve the lives of patients and their families. VectivBio’s product candidate, apraglutide, is a next-generation GLP-2 analog being developed as a differentiated therapeutic for a range of rare gastrointestinal (GI) diseases. Apraglutide is currently being evaluated in a global phase 3 clinical trial as a once-weekly treatment for short bowel syndrome with intestinal failure (SBS-IF). InvestorsGraham Morrellgraham.morrell@vectivbio.com MediaMorgan Warners+1 202 295 0124morgan.warners@fgh.com
The countdown is on for the Tokyo Olympics.The Games are scheduled for July 23 to August 8, and the Paralympics from August 24 to September 5.The one-year delay has already brought with it plenty of complications, and there are still some unanswered questions regarding things like: spectator numbers, and the so-called ‘Playbooks’.Some 11,000 Olympic athletes will compete in 33 sports, while over 4,000 Paralympians will compete across 22 sports.But with Japan’s elderly population only just starting to receive inoculations – there will be a need for restrictions still.International spectators will not be allowed. (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) TOKYO 2020 PRESIDENT, SEIKO HASHIMOTO, SAYING:"I myself as an athlete participated in the Olympics a number of times so the fact that overseas spectators are not able to attend the Games is very disappointing."Organizers plan to decide in April on the maximum number of local fans permitted in venues.Japanese sports arenas have been recently been operating at up to 50% capacity.Are athletes required to be vaccinated?The simple answer is: No.But the International Olympic Committee urges them to be vaccinated once vaccinations are made available to the general population of their countries.Participants must follow the health guidelines in their "Playbook."What is it?First unveiled in February, the ''Playbooks'' outline the rules that all Games participants must follow.That includes mandatory mask-wearing, keeping 2-metres' distance from athletes, and clapping instead of singing or shouting to show support.Athletes will also be tested at least once every four days.(SOUNDBITE) (English) JOHN COATES, IOC COORDINATION COMMISSION CHAIR, SAYING:"I have no hesitation in saying that the Games will take place and they'll be the safest Games possible.''Japan is holding several test events – seen as dress rehearsals to confirm the Games' operational capabilities at venues and test out health protocols.Early May will see four such events with athletes coming from abroad.There will be no shortage of compelling action once the Games kick off.Four sports will debut at this year's Olympics: karate, sport climbing, surfing, and skateboarding.Several stars from French judoka Teddy Riner to American swimmer Katie Ledecky will be back in the quest for more gold.Japanese swimmer Rikako Ikee competing after her recovery from leukaemia will no doubt be among the most emotional moments of the Games.
Eight months after a massive blast ripped through Beirut port and nearby districts of the Lebanese capital, a host of foreign companies with different national interests are competing to rebuild it.
The Oscars are the glitziest night of the year in Hollywood and millions across the globe tune in, but they threaten to be a dud in China after the nomination of a Hong Kong protest documentary.
Mel Greig has revealed the backlash she received after sharing her 'disturbing' sugar daddy experience. Read why she won't stay silent.
Former Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa told AFP on Tuesday that he plans to keep up his political fight from exile following his protege's election defeat.
Long, strong and versatile defensive lineman who might not be an elite pass rusher but has strong football and personal character
A $400 million medicinal marijuana facility is being built in Queensland as Tasmanian weed farms are set to double in size.
After more than a year of frustration, diehard American fans of cruise vacations at last sense an end to their Covid-imposed stranding, and many are booking trips as soon as they can.
President Joe Biden sent an unofficial delegation of former US officials to Taiwan on Wednesday in a signal of support for the democratic island as it faces increasingly hostile moves by China.
The Victorian government has decided on the final design of the state's long-awaited container deposit scheme, due to be rolled out in 2023.Environment Minister Lily D'Ambrosio on Wednesday announced the state will have a split scheme, with the government to provide regulatory oversight, while the beverage industry will be involved in managing operations.
(Bloomberg) -- Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. is considering raising about $1 billion to help expand its iconic British sports and racing automotive business Lotus Cars into the electric vehicles market in China, according to people familiar with the matter.Geely is working with advisers to sound out potential investor interest in a funding round that could value Lotus’s EV operations at about $5 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private.Separately from the fundraising, the Chinese company is also weighing an initial public offering of Lotus Cars, or just the British carmaker’s EV business, as soon as next year, the people said. A listing could value the entire business, including its combustion-driven sports and racing cars, at more than $15 billion, the people said.Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. shares rose as much as 6.6% in their biggest advance in a month, outperforming a 1% gain in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.Chinese billionaire Li Shufu’s Geely, which also controls Sweden-based Volvo Car AB, purchased a stake in Group Lotus in 2017. It owns 51% of the company, including both Lotus Cars and consultancy Lotus Engineering, while Malaysia’s Etika Automotive Bhd. owns the remainder, according to a press release. Under Geely, Lotus in 2019 launched its all-electric Evija hypercar, a 1,972-horsepower coupe that costs about $2 million.Considerations are ongoing and details including size and timing could change, the people said. A Geely representative declined to comment. Representatives for Lotus didn’t immediately comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.Geely is seeking to expand into electric vehicles amid a booming market in countries including China. Polestar, the electric carmaker controlled by Volvo Car and its owner Geely, is exploring options for going public as soon as this year, Bloomberg News has reported.Investor mania over EV-related stocks has pushed the share prices of players including Nio Inc. and Xpeng Inc. to stratospheric levels. That intense interest has also spawned a wave of EV upstarts raising billions and racing to list via special-purpose acquisition companies. More than $180 billion has been raised globally through SPAC IPOs in the past 12 months, Bloomberg-compiled data show.(Updates with Geely Automobile share price in fourth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Former world champion Billy Dib has opened up about his ill-fated association with 50 Cent and the feud that shattered his boxing dream.
(Bloomberg) -- In the unfathomably fast realm of high-frequency trading, a South Korean startup’s plan to build a microchip that speeds markets up by a few microseconds is bound to get some attention.The company, Rebellions Inc., was set up six months ago in Seoul by Park Sunghyun, who used to work as a quant developer at Morgan Stanley in New York, with two partners. The chip they’re developing aims to run artificial intelligence more efficiently, which could cut precious millionths of a second off the reaction times of automatic-trading machines.That’s a bold claim in the absence of a completed prototype, but fitting for a company named Rebellions because Park wants to disrupt the industry like the French Revolution upended the European country more than two centuries ago.It could also be a big deal if it pans out. Such is the state of speed in financial markets after traders spent the past decade shaving milliseconds -- or thousandths of a second, an eternity compared with the time scale Rebellions operates in -- off their reaction times by constructing nearly light-speed wireless networks spanning continents and crossing oceans.Since those networks are bumping up against the limits of physics -- nothing in the universe, not even traders’ wireless signals, can go faster than the speed of light -- edges are being found elsewhere. That includes traders trying to coax their machines to process data faster, so orders can be placed quicker.“An AI chip could halve the microseconds needed to make the orders,” said Park, 37, the chief executive officer of Rebellions and holder of a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “There are some companies that just continue to stick to the technology they are used to -- we want to change that.”The technology Rebellions is developing is called an application-specific integrated circuit, or ASIC -- a chip designed to do a single thing well, as opposed to general purpose microprocessors like the ones Intel Corp. made famous. This focus could help the Rebellions product run traders’ algorithms more efficiently than alternatives. That’s the idea, anyway.Rebellions is on an “unlimited” hiring spree, aiming to quadruple its 20-person workforce by 2023, Park said. It has gotten 5.5 billion won ($4.9 million) of investments from firms including Kakao Ventures, which is part of messaging giant Kakao Corp., and Shinhan Capital Ltd., a subsidiary of one of Korea’s biggest financial holding companies.Prototype PlansRebellions plans to have a prototype ready in the second half of the year. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, has agreed to begin making the ASICs in 2022. A few investment banks and quantitative trading firms are in talks to use them, Park said. He declined to identify them.“Anything that reduces latencies and improves speed will be important and be adopted by the industry,” said Richard Repetto, an analyst at Piper Sandler & Co. in New York. However, with trading speeds already so fast, creating a faster chip “is just not the arms race it was before,” he added.Major traders have in the past taken steps to get microseconds faster. CME Group Inc. runs one of the world’s biggest exchanges out of a data center in Aurora, Illinois, a town near Chicago. DRW Holdings LLC, a big derivatives trader, about half a decade ago attached an antenna on a utility pole beside the CME facility, gaining something like a microsecond edge on competitors whose wireless rigs were on a tower farther away.To catch up, another Chicago-based heavyweight, Jump Trading LLC, spent $14 million buying land across the street from the data center -- setting a new benchmark for the value of a microsecond in modern markets.Firms using the Rebellions ASIC could see “significant P&L improvement” from speeding up each trade, Park said, speaking from his experience as one of the operators behind Morgan Stanley’s trading machines for two years.High-speed trading is still in its early stages in Rebellions’ home country of South Korea. But, according to Larry Tabb, head of market structure research at Bloomberg Intelligence, in 2021 it’s accounted for as much as 57% of U.S. stock market volume, where high-frequency traders Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial Inc. are dominant.Park faces competition from other AI-focused ASICs. They include Google’s Tensor Processing Unit, a chip that helps power products like Gmail and Google Translate, and Groq Inc., founded by former members of Google’s TPU team. Intel acquired Habana Labs Ltd. in 2019 to boost its AI-chip prowess.Park is thinking big. After high-frequency trading, he wants to next create chips that speed up cloud services and enable autonomous driving.“Deep learning is going to be a mega trend, and we want to be ready before it comes,” he said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
(Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc. is beginning to tighten financing for some hedge fund clients following the Archegos Capital Management LP fiasco that may cost Japan’s biggest brokerage an estimated $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.The restrictions include curbing leverage for some clients previously granted exceptions to margin financing limits, one of the people said, declining to be identified as the details are private. A representative for the Tokyo-based firm declined to comment.Nomura is taking steps to reduce risk at its prime brokerage unit in the wake of the Archegos collapse that may result in combined losses of $10 billion for global banks, according to estimates from JPMorgan Chase & Co.The Japanese brokerage joins a swathe of high-profile lenders caught up in the failure including Credit Suisse Group AG, which disclosed a first-quarter charge of 4.4 billion Swiss francs ($4.76 billion) for its ties to the New York-based firm.Credit Suisse has also been tightening financing terms for hedge funds and family offices, in a potential revamp of new industry practices after the blowup, people with direct knowledge of the matter said last week. The Swiss bank is also planning a sweeping overhaul of the hedge fund business at the center of the incident.‘Too Early’Nomura is examining the cause of the possible losses and it’s too early to say how it might impact earnings, an executive at the firm said in March, asking not to be identified. They declined to say how much the company has unwound positions linked to Archegos, which made highly leveraged bets on stocks that imploded when the investments suddenly lost value last month.Shares in Nomura lost 2.3% as of 10:33 a.m. in Tokyo on Wednesday. Under Kentaro Okuda, who became chief executive officer last April, Nomura’s net income reached a 19-year high for the nine months ended in December, driven by a boom in trading and investment banking at home and overseas. The brokerage said in late March that it had an estimated $2 billion claim against a U.S. client, which Bloomberg identified as Archegos. The announcement sent the stock plunging 16% on March 29.Although Nomura is yet to confirm exactly how much it will lose from Archegos, SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. analysts led by Masao Muraki have said that it may post a 95 billion yen loss in the fourth quarter as a result of the trades.The brokerage isn’t the only Japanese financial institution taking a hit from Archegos. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc.’s securities unit is booking a $270 million loss from the debacle, while Mizuho Financial Group Inc. faces about 10 billion yen in potential losses, Bloomberg has reported.Prime-brokerage divisions cater specifically to hedge funds, lending them cash and securities and conducting their trades. The relationships can be very lucrative for investment banks as well as a significant source of revenue.(Updates with Wednesday’s stock price in seventh paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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