BUSINESS

Swiss sportswear brand On Holding announced on September 18 that it had signed French football star Kylian Mbappé, ending his partnership with Nike dating back to 2006. The deal includes cash and equity, while On expects to launch its first football boots in 2027.

Fitch says the US private credit default rate has risen to a record 6.3%, while PIMCO estimates defaults among BDCs at 19%. Houlihan Lokey, weighting defaults by loan size, puts the rate below 1%. The disparity reflects differences in the scope and definitions used.

ICAP data showed the overnight repo rate for five-year US Treasuries briefly fell to minus 0.85% on Friday, while the two-year yield rose to 4.743%. Traders are also positioning for next week’s auctions of two-, five- and seven-year debt.

China Zhejiang Construction Group’s subsidiary China State HuaYing Construction has won a public housing project in Cheung Sha Wan, Kowloon, for about HK$1.5 billion. Its Hong Kong-listed affiliate, China State HuaYing Construction Group (01582.HK), currently has a market capitalisation of only about HK$200 million.

China Merchants Securities (6099.HK) will begin paying its 2026 interim dividend on September 15. Together with 27 other brokerages, it will distribute a total of RMB27.916 billion, up about 45% year on year. On the same day, CITIC Securities (6030.HK) received approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission to issue up to RMB40 billion in perpetual subordinated bonds.

LandSpace and Orienspace launched satellites within 24 hours, but their disclosures, contrasting rocket technologies and Qianfan's missed targets complicate claims that China's commercial space sector has industrialised.

Alibaba raised HK$80 billion through a share placement, Tencent issued nearly 17 billion yuan and US$2.45 billion in bonds, while ByteDance signed a US$29.6 billion syndicated loan. The three mainland technology giants raised more than HK$100 billion between them, with the funds aimed at AI infrastructure.

Behind the filing: a Hong Kong listing plan and a gap with Advantest that isn't closed yet

BYD said the number of vehicles equipped with assisted-driving functions reached 3.72 million by the end of August, generating more than 230 million km of data a day. Group deliveries also hit a monthly record of 440,293 vehicles, although checks show that Fang Cheng Bao’s Bao 8 is currently the only model in the BYD group using Huawei’s assisted-driving system.

US data centres could increase their natural gas consumption by 15 billion cubic feet a day by 2035, more than the current total consumption of any country except China, Russia, Iran and the US, according to a new BloombergNEF report. Technology giants are bypassing the grid to build their own gas-fired power plants.

ASR Microelectronics has applied for a Hong Kong listing. Despite ranking first globally in cellular connectivity chip shipments and improving revenue and gross margins, it remained loss-making after excluding extraordinary items and faces risks including customer concentration, rising inventories and Alibaba’s incomplete sell-down.

As humanoid robot companies compete for exposure at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala and move towards capital-market listings, questions are being raised over the revenue structures, data-collection-centre model and commercial viability of firms including Unitree Robotics.

The Korea Exchange will extend trading until 8pm from September 14, while Nasdaq has confirmed plans to introduce five-day, 23-hour trading from December 6. Both are adding hours to compete with the round-the-clock cryptocurrency market.

Shein’s public offering was 5.63 times oversubscribed, yet its shares fell a cumulative 8% in the first three trading sessions. Analysts said the small public tranche, locked-up cornerstone shares and weakening fundamentals had all weighed on its short-term performance.

The recent sale of several properties by the Ma Kiu-sang family — from strong returns in Wuhu Street to losses at The Center — highlights the volatility and challenges facing Hong Kong’s retail property market.

A McKinsey survey found that Hong Kong financial advisers are trailing their clients in AI adoption, particularly those serving the mass market. Advisers serving wealthier customers are making greater use of AI to boost productivity and performance.

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank will stop offering personal precious-metals agency services through the Shanghai Gold Exchange from September, joining more than 10 mainland lenders including Postal Savings Bank, ICBC, China Construction Bank and Bank of Communications. Regulatory efforts to curb risks from financial derivatives began as early as 2020. This year, some banks raised margin requirements to 140%, effectively cutting off retail investors' access to leveraged gold trading.

Expectations of US tariffs have sent copper into COMEX warehouses, pushing London copper above a record US$14,700 per tonne on September 8. At the same time, mainland smelters are being forced to cut production as treatment charges for copper concentrates fall into negative territory. Markets are closely watching the key September 28 deadline linked to US tariff policy.

Trading through China's Stock Connect programs reached record levels in early 2026, highlighting increased cross-border capital flows between mainland China and Hong Kong, according to a recent HKEX review.

Nomura's data shows ByteDance's apps surpassing Tencent in user time, but the comparison may misrepresent advertising competitiveness due to differing app functionalities.

Alibaba has restructured its wholesale operations, merging 1688 with its international arm, amidst AI advancements and market shifts. This move highlights a strategic focus on factory relationships over ad auctions.

In August, China's top ten best-selling passenger vehicles were all new-energy models, highlighting a shift as gasoline cars increasingly target export markets due to domestic fuel price hikes.

Prices hit an all-time high in early September even as exchange inventories rose and spot premiums vanished — a pattern that points less to a physical shortage than to a policy-driven scramble, with electrification, not data-center hardware, doing the heavy lifting.

Explore the implications of Moore Threads' stock movement post-lockup expiry, as capital shifts within China's semiconductor sector. Discover how ETF inflows and AI-hardware rallies signal investor strategies beyond a single stock's decline.

Foreign coverage has already labeled Tesla's September incentives in China a price cut. What it hasn't connected: the careful way Tesla itself describes the offer, and the margin backdrop it's happening against.

Tencent's Hunyuan Hy4 preview vaulted to the top of a widely watched AI usage chart this week — but its price, its promotional timing, and what the chart actually measures complicate the price-war story built around it.

Apple's projected 25% share of the global foldable market has stayed fixed across two Counterpoint Research forecasts since July — even as the firm revised Samsung's and Huawei's numbers underneath it.

Signed sales at the state-backed developer rose 8% in the first half. Revenue fell 15% and margins compressed. Both things are true, and neither one is the full picture.

The widely told story is that money is flooding back into Chinese stock ETFs as a bottom-fishing, risk-on signal. The week's own data says otherwise — and a popular rate-driven explanation collides with the fact that Treasury yields hit a 20-month high the same week.