The National Pension Service of Korea posted a 27.2% return for the first half of the year, marking its strongest H1 performance since at least 2022, according to Bloomberg.
A robust rally in domestic equities helped lift results at one of the world's largest pension funds.
For the first half of 2026, Xpeng Group reported revenue of 32.78 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 3.8%, while net loss widened to 3.12 billion yuan, about 173.7% higher than a year earlier.
Its robotics division completed an initial financing round of more than $900 million, with a post-investment valuation above $6.3 billion (roughly 4.3 billion yuan).
In the second quarter, revenue advanced 8% year over year to 19.74 billion yuan, while revenue from vehicle sales reached 17.05 billion yuan, up 1%.
The gross margin reached 20.7%, with the automotive gross margin at 12.1%. Service and other revenue climbed 93.9% to 2.7 billion yuan, carrying a gross margin of 75.1%.
R&D expenditure rose 32.1% to 2.91 billion yuan, and selling, general and administrative expenses increased 15.2% to 2.5 billion yuan. Net loss for the quarter widened to 1.34 billion yuan from 480 million yuan a year earlier, though it improved from 1.78 billion yuan in the first quarter.
Xpeng Group delivered about 166,000 vehicles in the first half, down 15.8% year on year, with 62,682 shipped in the first quarter and 103,295 in the second.
The company projected third-quarter deliveries of 115,000 to 121,000 and revenue of 21.7 billion to 23.4 billion yuan, both figures below market expectations.
July deliveries reached 38,027 vehicles, up about 4% from a year earlier, bringing year-to-date deliveries to 204,004.
Martins Kazaks, a member of the European Central Bank's Governing Council, said the central bank cannot permit elevated inflation to persist. The remarks were reported by Bloomberg.
BNP Paribas Co., Ltd. is reported to be planning a panda bond issue in yuan with a maximum size of 6 billion yuan, according to people familiar with the matter.
The offering would be split into three tranches: a 3-year tranche with an initial maximum size of 1 billion yuan, a 5-year tranche with a maximum size of 4 billion yuan, and a 7-year tranche with a maximum size of 1 billion yuan. Marketing is expected to begin as early as September.
China's two leading copper producers reported that their profits more than doubled in the first half of 2026, aided by stronger copper prices and a rise in sulfuric acid revenue, Bloomberg said.
Sulfuric acid is produced as a by-product of the smelting process.
The Bank of Russia has expanded its surveillance of illicit crypto activity by adding 2,600 cryptocurrency wallet addresses to a dedicated information system, according to Bits.media.
ChainCatcher reports these addresses are linked to legal entities, project teams, and individual business owners, collectively holding about 1 billion rubles in crypto assets.
The information system is now accessible to government agencies and law enforcement, and bank transactions connected to the listed addresses are likely to be frozen.
The central bank said roughly 74% of the addresses are associated with financial pyramids and fraud, including fake crypto investments, bogus data-center projects, and unlawful crypto lending involving USDT stablecoins.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. notes that shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have rebounded to roughly two-thirds of pre-war levels.
The partial recovery is viewed as helping to limit the war's influence on global crude prices.
The Japanese hybrid bond market is rebounding as investors seeking higher yields and issuers looking to finance acquisitions or refinance debt turn to hybrids to avoid equity dilution, Bloomberg reports.
Demand for these securities has revived as companies tap hybrid bonds for deal financing and refinancing needs.
Tencent Holdings completed a HK$301 million share repurchase on August 27, extending its streak to nine consecutive trading days of buybacks dating from August 17, according to Jiemian News.
As of August 27, the company217;s year-to-date buybacks total HK$28.832 billion, the highest figure in the Hong Kong market, with Xiaomi Group in second place at HK$11.815 billion, the same report noted.
Tang Daosheng, Tencent217;s executive vice president who leads the cloud and smart industries group, stated in an internal publication that the AI sector217;s momentum in the second half has only just begun, emphasizing the importance of staying power over early starts.
Tencent and Xiaomi are the top two holdings in the Huaxia Hang Seng Internet ETF (513330.SH). Jiemian described the ETF as the largest product tracking the Hang Seng Internet Technology Index and the only Hong Kong-listed internet index fund that fully covers Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Kuaishou and Xiaomi.
DigitalBridge Group, the U.S. private equity firm that SoftBank Group is set to acquire, has agreed to buy PLUS ES, an independently operated unit of Ausgrid Group.
PLUS ES provides metering and data services to retail electricity companies, utilities, and grid operators, and is one of the country's largest smart meter service providers, overseeing roughly 2 million meters across the national electricity market.
Justin Chang, DigitalBridge Asia-Pacific head and Senior Managing Director, described PLUS ES as positioned at the intersection of digital infrastructure and the energy transition.
The deal remains subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, and no transaction value was disclosed.