In the middle of the past week shareholders of the TMX (Toronto Stock Exchange) failed to approve a planned merger with the LSE (London Stock Exchange). The early proxies for the approval by TMX shareholders made it evident that a required 2/3 vote for approval of the merger would not be possible. The failure of the merger came as a hostile bid for the TMX by the Maple Group became publicly known. The Maple Group is a consortium of business and banking interests which are all Canadian. more »

Singapore will be hiring more than 300,000 mid-to-senior level professionals in 2011, according to The Times of India . Only half of these will be hired domestically, with 60,000 coming from India and 90,000 from elsewhere in the world. Because of globalization, 60% of the new hires will be located outside of Singapore. The Times specifically mentions China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Kong, Vietnam and Australia as countries seeing expansion of Singapore firms. more »

The Mumbai stock market was down for the ninth straight day Thursday. In morning trading Friday, however, it was rebounding. Downward pressure on markets around the world has been reinforced in India by domestic issues, including a 50 basis point interest rate hike by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and developments in the telecom scandal trial. At market close Friday the Sensex was ahead by 1.7%. more »

Wednesday morning (April 20, 2011) Asia/Pacific stocks are following the rest of the world which saw rebounds in stock prices everywhere after more than a week of trading irregularly lower. The leading markets are Tokyo and Seoul, each up by 1.7%. more »

All eleven major stock markets in the Asia/Pacific region are trading lower Tuesday morning (April 19, 2011). Five of the markets have losses exceeding 1% so far. more »