Bloomberg Businessweek-Asia Edition April 4, 2022

● Global coronavirus cases have passed 486m More than 6.1 million people have died worldwide, and almost 11.3 billion vaccine doses have been given. China intensified measures to curb its latest outbreak, putting half of Shanghai into lockdown for four days on March 28, followed by the other half. ● Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she’ll vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, ensuring that the first Black woman to take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court will have bipartisan support. ● As cease-fire talks dragged on in Istanbul, Russia continued shelling Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Russia had promised on March 29 to scale back operations around the capital, but Ukraine, the U.S., and NATO remain skeptical: Such a move could merely be a feint to allow troops to regroup…

By officially accusing the Russian military of committing war crimes in Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s administration has seemingly confirmed the obvious. Vladimir Putin’s troops have attacked apartment buildings, hospitals, shopping centers, and schools during their invasion. They’ve cut countless Ukrainians off from food, heat, electricity, and running water. Thousands of civilians have been wounded or killed. Despite Biden’s off-the-cuff remark on March 26 that Putin “cannot remain in power,” it remains at best uncertain the Russian president will ever be ousted, let alone face justice for atrocities committed in Ukraine. Even so, the U.S. was right to put the idea on the table: A vigorous war-crimes investigation into this conflict is now essential. As Russia’s ground offensive has slowed in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance, its bombardment of population centers has…

▶ India’s central bank sets interest rates on April 8. Governor Shaktikanta Das has signaled there’s no hurry for it to follow the Fed and other peers in raising borrowing costs. ▶ The UN publishes its Food Price Index on April 7. The invasion of Ukraine has led to surging costs for staples such as sunflower oil and wheat. ▶ U.K. Fintech Week kicks off on April 4 in London, bringing together politicians such as Chancellor Rishi Sunak with bank executives and regulators. ▶ The Farnborough Sustainable Skies World Summit, April 5-6, will discuss ways to make air travel more eco-friendly and achieve a net-zero emissions target. ▶ The largest conference focused on Bitcoin happens in Miami April 6-9. Speakers include Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador, and billionaire investor Peter Thiel. ▶ The…

Wall Street doesn’t usually let moral dilemmas get in the way of making money. There’s almost always a bidder for whatever security is on offer, no matter how dodgy the issuer, how funky the structure, or how unpleasant the circumstances. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is no exception. Even before the missiles started raining down on Kyiv, the financial opportunists who prey on market dislocation were already hunting for bargains in Russian bonds. They had plenty to choose from. Almost all of Russia’s debt, both sovereign and corporate, remains open for trading under U.S. economic sanctions. And, because demand has collapsed, the yields on all that paper are now among the highest in the world. One government bond that matures in September 2023 was recently quoted at 48¢ on the…

Society has long worried that the widespread adoption of robots will displace workers and eliminate jobs. But rather than fearing the arrival of automatons, Shakerria Grier, a 27-year-old quality auditor at Georgia-based Thomson Plastics Inc., is relieved to get the help. In late 2020, Thomson began installing robots that take plastic parts, such as fenders for ATVs or covers for lawn mowers, out of hot-molding machines and place them on a conveyor belt that brings them to Grier. In the past, workers had extracted the parts, with Grier making the rounds among nine machines to troubleshoot for defects. “My job is way easier,” she says. “Before the robot, I would have to go to every station and make sure the parts are good. It was a lot of walking.” The robots…

After helping Occidental Petroleum Corp. win a bidding war for Anadarko Petroleum by purchasing $10 billion of Oxy’s preferred stock in 2019 and then quietly buying up a sizable stake in regular shares during the following months, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. suddenly disappeared from the common stock in 2020, giving no reason for the investor’s about-face. Now, Buffett is once again on the Occidental bandwagon—and with more momentum than ever. Just as billionaire investor Carl Icahn exited his own stake in Occidental, Berkshire disclosed in a regulatory filing in March a rekindled interest that’s led to a buying spree. In just a few weeks, Berkshire stacked up an investment worth about $7.7 billion on top of its preferred stock holding, making it the biggest shareholder at Occidental and landing the…