Aurelia Butler

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BEIJING (Reuters) – China Everbright (OTC:CHFFF) Group’s former chairman Tang Shuangning was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption, bribery, and abusing his position for personal gains, state broadcaster CCTV said on Tuesday.Tang was arrested on suspicion of taking bribes in January, in an intensified campaign aimed at weeding out corrupt officials in the financial sector. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will warn against further tax cuts for the wealthy and a reprise of Republican “trickle-down economics” during Donald Trump’s second term in what could be his final speech on the economy on Tuesday, a White House official said.Biden will argue in the speech, which comes a month after bruising election defeats for the Democrats driven by voters’ concerns about inflation, that his push to boost investments in infrastructure, manufacturing and neglected communities averted a bigger economic crisis and laid the groundwork for continued economic growth, the official said.Enacting another major tax cut benefiting rich Americans and cutting government old age and health insurance programs would threaten those gains, Biden will argue, while acknowledging that it will take years to see the full impact of his efforts.In his remarks at the Brookings Institution, Biden plans to highlight the creation of 16 million jobs, the most in any single presidential term, the lowest average unemployment of any administration in 50 years and the smallest racial wealth gap in 20 years, the official said.The speech echoes the message Biden pushed throughout his aborted 2024 election campaign and continued by Vice President Kamala Harris after he dropped out, although neither official was able to win over voters scarred by high food and housing prices.Despite the strength of major economic indicators and a drop in inflation from a peak of 9% more than two years ago to 2.4%, voters punished the Democrats and handed the Republicans the White House and control of both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.Investment banks expect Trump’s return to the White House to fuel a dealmaking revival that could boost investment banking income to $316 billion globally next year, a jump of about 5.7% on 2024, but economists warn that the Republican’s pledge to impose high tariffs could reignite inflation while further tax cuts could swell the already high U.S. deficit. More

$75 per monthComplete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.What’s included Global news & analysisExpert opinionFT App on Android & iOSFT Edit appFirstFT: the day’s biggest stories20+ curated newslettersFollow topics & set alerts with myFTFT Videos & Podcasts20 monthly gift articles to shareLex: FT’s flagship investment column15+ Premium newsletters by leading expertsFT Digital Edition: our digitised print edition More

SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea’s opposition-controlled parliament on Tuesday passed a government budget bill for 2025 that was slashed from the government’s proposal and triggered President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law decree last week. The 300-member parliament voted 183-94 to pass a 673.3 trillion won ($470.60 billion) budget for 2025, which was cut by the Democratic Party from the government’s proposed 677.4 trillion won budget without reaching agreement with the ruling People Power Party and the government. It was the first time the parliament passed a budget trimmed down without consent from government ministries or between rival parties. Lawmakers would need finance ministry consent to make any upward revisions in government spending for the following year.”A swift passage of the bill will help resolve the current unease and crisis,” Democratic Party Leader Lee Jae-myung said. The government says the budget cut will paralyse basic government functions, hinder responses to external challenges and delay policy measures for small businesses and vulnerable citizens. President Yoon cited opposition obstructionism over government budgets as one justification for his martial law decree on Dec. 3, which triggered a constitutional crisis in Asia’s fourth largest economy.Senior Democratic Party lawmaker Park Chan-dae said if the government needed money for “spending for people’s livelihoods, it can be solved later through an extra budget”.The Democratic Party says cuts were mostly in reserve funds for the government, interest costs and funds allocated to the presidential office, prosecutors and auditors for classified operations.Parliament Speaker Woo Won-shik said it was regrettable the government was uncooperative during the consultation process and he asked it to prepare a supplementary budget draft for 2025. Economists said the reduction in the government budget was a setback for the economy, which narrowly avoided a technical recession in the third quarter amid a slowdown in exports and a weak recovery in domestic demand. “It is not good news for the economy at a time when it needs fiscal policy to be expansionary. It will create a policy vacuum and makes a supplementary budget next year look almost certain,” said Park Sang-hyun, an economist at iM Securities. Citi analysts estimate the opposition’s fiscal spending cut would lower economic growth by around 0.02 percentage points over a year. South Korea’s economic growth is expected to slow to 1.9% in 2025 and 1.8% in 2026, after rising by 2.2% this year, according to the Bank of Korea. ($1 = 1,430.7200 won) More