crypto financial services Overview

This year, the amount of M&A transactions involving listed companies in Hong Kong has reached 38 billion US dollars, which has triggered a rare bidding war. This year is expected to be the busiest year for M&A transactions involving listed companies in Hong Kong in the past decade, with industries ranging from skin care products to logistics real estate, and the bidding war has also warmed up. It is reported that China Mobile's bid for Hongkong Broadband may face competition from American private equity firm I Squared Capital. Bi Hua, chairman of Fenmei Packaging, is negotiating with Qihao Capital to jointly counter the privatization offer of Shandong Xinjufeng. The data shows that the scale of M&A transactions for listed companies in Hong Kong has reached $38 billion this year, the highest level since 2017, including the merger of Guotai Junan Securities and Haitong Securities, a smaller competitor, to become the largest brokerage firm in China.According to the data of Cat's Eye Professional Edition, the movie "Lone Star Project" was released for 6 days, and the total box office broke 70 million.Samsung Electronics will hold its 2025 strategy meeting next week. Yonhap News Agency quoted unnamed industry sources as saying that Samsung Electronics will hold its 2025 global strategy meeting next week. The electronic products business meeting is scheduled to be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, while the semiconductor department meeting will be held on Thursday. The main agenda items include the upcoming Galaxy S25 smartphone. Lee Jae-yong, the company's executive chairman, is not expected to attend these meetings.

Citigroup slightly lowered South Korea's GDP growth forecast to 1.5% next year. It is expected that the Bank of Korea will cut interest rates next month. Citigroup released a report saying that considering the worse economic sentiment in South Korea this month, it slightly lowered its GDP forecast for this year and next year by 0.1 percentage point to 2.1% and 1.5% respectively. The bank slightly lowered Korea's GDP growth forecast for the last quarter of this year by 0.1 percentage point to rise by 0.3% quarterly, and raised its GDP growth forecast for the first quarter of next year by 0.1 percentage point to rise by 0.6% quarterly. Looking forward to the first quarter of next year, the bank expects South Korea to adopt a combination of expansionary policies, including the Bank of Korea's expected interest rate cut to 2.75% in mid-January, and the government's expected additional budget of 30 trillion won (equivalent to about 1.1% of GDP next year). It is expected that the Bank of Korea will cut interest rates by 25BP each in January, April, July and October next year, and the final interest rate is expected to be 2%.China galaxy International lowered the target price of Yanghe shares from RMB 88.00 to RMB 84.00.Indian Rupee's exchange rate against the US dollar fell below 84.86, a record low.

South Korean police tried to search Cheongwadae's office again.According to the data of Cat's Eye Professional Edition, the movie "Lone Star Project" was released for 6 days, and the total box office broke 70 million.South Korea will gradually reduce the rice planting area to cope with the decline in demand. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs of South Korea said on Thursday that South Korea will strive to gradually reduce the rice field area to solve the problem of declining demand and adopt environmentally-friendly planting methods. Due to the change of diet structure, the annual rice consumption of Koreans has decreased, and the per capita rice consumption has dropped significantly from 61 kg in 2018 to 56.4 kg in 2023. At present, the total area of rice fields in South Korea is about 698,000 hectares, and the government says it plans to reduce the area of rice fields by 80,000 hectares next year. In addition, by 2029, the planting area of environmentally friendly rice will be expanded from 35,000 hectares this year to 68,000 hectares. The government will also allocate 244 billion won (about 170 million US dollars) to subsidize farms that grow strategic crops other than rice, such as wheat, beans and barley, which is an increase from 186.5 billion won this year.