Bitcoin falls after exchange is hacked, US$72 mil stolen from Bitfinex exchange in HK

Securing the bitcoin trading platform has proved elusive.

The price of bitcoin fell sharply today exacerbating an already ongoing decline as global market participants reacted to news that one of the largest digital currency exchanges had been hacked. Bitcoin Drops Nearly 20% as Exchange Hack Amplifies Price Decline

The price of the virtual currency bitcoin fell sharply after Hong Kong-based digital-currency exchange Bitfinex said it was hacked, resulting in the possible theft of about $65 million worth of bitcoin.

News of the Bitfinex hack hit the price of bitcoin hard in heavy trading on Tuesday. It fell to $540 by late in the day, down about 12% from its level near $613 early Tuesday, according to CoinDesk. At one point, it traded as low as $480, down about 22%, though it recovered to about $548 by late morning in New York on Wednesday.

The hack marks one of the largest thefts in bitcoin’s short history and follows a separate alleged theft of an estimated $60 million worth of ethereum, a rival virtual currency, in June. In 2014, investor confidence in bitcoin also was dented by another larger cybersecurity breach, at the Japanese exchange Mt. Gox.

Hacking and thefts of investor property stand as two of the biggest issues that may prevent the fast-growing digital currency from gaining more widespread use. Bitcoin trades on an open ledger known as the blockchain that has excited technologists for its ability to cut out expensive layers of bureaucracy in various areas of commerce.

But securing the bitcoin trading platform has proved elusive. Tuesday, Bitfinex acknowledged the latest theft in a statement on its website and said it was halting all trading on Bitfinex as well as the deposits and withdrawals of digital tokens.

“The theft is being reported to—and we are co-operating with—law enforcement,” the statement said. “We are deeply concerned about this issue and we are committing every resource to try to resolve it.”

Zane Tackett, Bitfinex’s director of community and product development, confirmed that 119,756 bitcoins were stolen and said the company knows “exactly how relevant systems were compromised.” At Tuesday’s value, the amount of bitcoin stolen was worth about $65 million. Mr. Tackett said the company is working with law enforcement and analytics companies to try to track down the stolen coins and is working to get its platform back up so customers can check their accounts.

It wasn’t clear what percentage of Bitfinex’s overall assets were stolen or whether or not the company had adequate insurance to cover the theft.

“We are investigating the breach to determine what happened, but we know that some of our users have had their bitcoins stolen,” the statement added. “We are undertaking a review to determine which users have been affected by the breach. While we conduct this initial investigation and secure our environment, bitfinex.com will be taken down and the maintenance page will be left up.”

In 2014, the Tokyo-based exchange Mt. Gox collapsed after a yearslong series of attacks resulted in the theft of about 850,000 bitcoins, at the time worth about $450 million. About 200,000 were later recovered. In June, Mt. Gox Chief Executive Mark Karpales was released from a Japanese prison on bail, after serving 10 months. The company’s liquidation is ongoing.

Bitcoin rallied earlier this year but had been selling off lately after an anticipated event known as a “halving” in early July lowered the subsidy paid to bitcoin miners supporting the network.

In 2015, Bitfinex switched to a system protected by what is known as “multiple signature” security, a feature that requires multiple “keys” to access bitcoin in a virtual wallet, and keeps the customers’ money in separate accounts, rather than pooling them into one larger account.

The exchange was fined $75,000 by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in June for offering illegal off-exchange commodity transactions financed in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and for failing to register as a futures commission merchant. The CFTC said at the time that Bitfinex cooperated with its investigation and voluntarily made changes to its business practices to comply with regulations.

- The Wall Street Journal BY PAUL VIGNA AND GREGOR STUART HUNTER

Bitcoin worth US$72 mil stolen from Bitfinex exchange in Hong Kong

A Bitcoin (virtual currency) paper wallet with QR codes and a coin are seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris, France, May 27, 2015. Reuters/Benoit Tessier/File Photo

HONG KONG (Aug 3): Nearly 120,000 units of digital currency bitcoin worth about US$72 million was stolen from the exchange platform Bitfinex in Hong Kong, rattling the global bitcoin community in the second-biggest security breach ever of such an exchange.

Bitfinex is the world's largest dollar-based exchange for bitcoin, and is known in the digital currency community for having deep liquidity in the US dollar/bitcoin currency pair.

Zane Tackett, Director of Community & Product Development for Bitfinex, told Reuters on Wednesday that 119,756 bitcoin had been stolen from users' accounts and that the exchange had not yet decided how to address customer losses.

"The bitcoin was stolen from users' segregated wallets," he said.

The company said it had reported the theft to law enforcement and was cooperating with top blockchain analytic companies to track the stolen coins.

Last year, Bitfinex announced a tie-up with Palo Alto-based BitGo, which uses multiple-signature security to store user deposits online, allowing for faster withdrawals.

"Our investigation has found no evidence of a breach to any BitGo servers," BitGo said in a Tweet.

"With users' funds secured using multi-signature technology in partnership with BitGo, a lot more is at stake for the backbone of the bitcoin industry, with its stalwarts and prided tech under fire," said Charles Hayter, chief executive and founder of digital currency website CryptoCompare.

The security breach comes two months after Bitfinex was ordered to pay a US$75,000 fine by the US Commodity and Futures Trading Commission in part for offering illegal off-exchange financed commodity transactions in bitcoin and other digital currencies.

BITCOIN SLUMP

Tuesday's breach triggered a slump in bitcoin prices and was reminiscent of events that led to the 2014 collapse of Tokyo-based exchange Mt Gox, which said it had lost about US$500 million worth of customers' Bitcoins in a hacking attack.

Bitcoin plunged just over 23% on Tuesday after the news broke. On Wednesday it was up 1% at US$545.20 on the BitStamp platform.

Tackett added that the breach did not "expose any weaknesses in the security of a blockchain", the technology that generates and processes bitcoin, a web-based "cryptocurrency" that can move across the globe anonymously without the need for a central authority.

A bitcoin expert said the scandal highlighted the risks of companies using cryptography for their ledgers.

"The more you rely on its benefits, the greater the potential for damage when keys are stolen. We still have some way to go to create highly secure but convenient systems," said Singapore-based Antony Lewis.

The volume of bitcoin stolen amounts to about 0.75% of all bitcoin in circulation.

It is not yet clear whether the theft was an inside job or whether hackers were able to gain access to the system externally. On an online forum, Bitfinex's Tackett said he was "nearly 100% certain" it was no one in the company.

Bitfinex suspended trading on Tuesday after it discovered the breach. It said on its website that it was investigating and cooperating with the authorities.

The security breach is the latest scandal to hit Hong Kong's bitcoin market after MyCoin became embroiled in a scam last year that media estimated could have duped investors of up to US$387 million. The bitcoin trading company closed after the scandal.

The president of the Hong Kong Bitcoin Association said the only way to protect information is to disperse it in so many small pieces that the reward for hacking is too small.

"For an attacker, the cost-benefit strategy is quite easy: How much is in the pot and how likely is it that I'm getting the pot?" said Leonhard Weese.

The attack on Bitfinex was reminiscent of a similar breach at Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange forced to file for bankruptcy in early 2014 after hackers stole an estimated $650 million worth of customer bitcoins.  - Reuters

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Why have US tech giants Uber sunk in China? Its legal status, plans in Asia

https://youtu.be/jndu38nTQaA

China's ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing on Monday announced a strategic deal with Uber China. Under the agreement, Didi Chuxing will acquire all assets of Uber China including its brand, business operations and data. Didi will also obtain a minority equity interest in Uber.

The acquisition has sparked strong reactions among the US and other Western media. They portrayed the deal as "Uber's surrender" to Didi, repeating the failures of other American high-tech firms in China.

An article in The New York Times claimed that over the last couple of decades, Amazon, Facebook, Google and other American technology giants, like an imperial armada, rolled out from North America's West Coast, to "try to establish beachheads on every other continent. But when American giants tried to enter the waters of China, the world's largest Internet market, the armada invariably ran aground."

The US media advocate that China's problem is largely to blame for the sinking of the American high-tech armada. According to them, the Internet has been divided into two parts - the Chinese Internet and the Internet of the rest of the world. The Chinese Internet lacks transparency and is subject to the government supervision. Only homegrown firms can adapt to it.

The Internet does have its own supervision system, but the supervision is fair to both local and foreign companies. US Internet giants are at the helm of networking technology development, while Chinese homegrown companies as a whole still lack the ability to lead the industry. As the US firms are naturally in an advantageous position, what makes domestic Chinese firms triumph over them?

Despite starting by imitating US companies, Chinese Internet giants have based themselves on China's realities. They not only have extensively made technical innovations in accordance with the demands of Chinese users, but also adapted their business modes to the Chinese market and other non-market factors. But when US firms operate in China, they often confound the core pursuits of Chinese users.

Take Google. Bound by values and emboldened by support from netizens who are well-disposed toward the West, Google had developed the ambition to transform China. But it made a strategic misjudgment of the Chinese market. When it was squarely at odds with the Chinese government, it didn't have support from the majority of Chinese netizens.

With growing strength, China's local Internet companies are becoming more confident and their employees are more industrious. All these add to their chances of defeating foreign competitors.

Apart from the Internet industry, foreign enterprises are also facing fiercer competition from their local rivals. The vitality of China's own business is being continually unleashed. If foreign companies want to win in the Chinese market, they have to invest more efforts. Don't use politics as an excuse for their failures. It won't be of any help. - Global Times

Legal status of app-based ride-sharing a new start

A Chinese mobile phone user uses the taxi-hailing and car-service app Didi Chuxing on his Apple iPhone smartphone in Jinan city, east China's Shandong province, Feb 22, 2015.[Photo/IC]

https://youtu.be/tWC74SRSgsk

Customers love them, because private transportation has never been this convenient, efficient, and accessible.

Taxi drivers oppose them, because their rapid expansion and popularity have resulted in conspicuous customer drain for the traditional taxi market.

Government regulators find them concerning, because they do raise questions about safety, fairness and legitimacy. Not to mention, they do not fit into any existing regulatory framework.

Which is why mobile app-based ride-sharing services, such as Uber and various indigenous cousins, have found themselves in a largely undefined gray zone.

In Beijing, for instance, where Uber and its Chinese look-alikes have grown phenomenally, contracted drivers have been operating in stealth mode for fear of heavy fines.

But despite all the complaints, resistance, even bans in some places, Uber and similar services have continued mushrooming and prospering.

The popularity of app-based ride-sharing has a lot to do with dissatisfaction with taxi services in the pre-Uber days.

In China, however, it goes far beyond a more pleasant user experience. Multiple recent surveys have highlighted the new services' role as job creator.

Uber and its local peers have reportedly become an important income provider for workers displaced in the process of reducing industrial overcapacity. One survey even reported that being a contracted driver for Uber or a similar ride-sharing service provider is the only source of income for more than half of the workers laid off recently in the coal and steel industries.

Given the obvious loopholes in operation and management of such services, especially with regard to driver certification, security guarantees and taxation, it is certainly necessary to regulate the industry.

But an all-win, all-happy solution is difficult to arrive at precisely because such services are too new, too complicated for regulators.

The authorities made a daring, respectable move on Thursday by giving app-based ride-sharing legal status and introducing standards for the new sector.

Yet although it has been reviewed and revised repeatedly based on feedback from the public, the regulatory regime unveiled still needs further research and clarification.

The stipulations show plenty of thought has been given to key problems surrounding the brand-new business model. But they do display the inclination to include the new services into regulators' modus operandi, and render them another part of the traditional taxi service market.

Such an inclination may undermine the otherwise promising prospects of something the public clearly wants. - China Daily

Uber plans to boost resources in SEA, India

Out of China: A man walks past an Uber station outside a shopping mall in Beijing. Didi Chuxing said on Monday it will buy Uber’s operations in China, putting an end to a year-long war between the world’s two largest ride-sharing companies. — AFP

This comes after sale of China ops to Didi Chuxing

SINGAPORE: Uber Technologies Inc will redeploy 150 engineers from its China operations to other key markets such as Southeast Asia after agreeing to sell its business in the world’s most populous nation, according to people with direct knowledge of the plan.

The San Francisco-based employees will develop new features such as mapping as it boosts services for the region that includes Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private.

Didi Chuxing said on Monday it will buy Uber’s operations in China, putting an end to a year-long war between the world’s two largest ride-sharing companies.

The China deal will also allow Uber to free up capital to double down on putting resources into other markets and hire more engineers locally in India, the people said. Uber has a total global workforce of about 8,000, spanning engineering, marketing and operations. Uber declined to comment.

Uber’s shift is a sign it won’t let up in its battle for customers elsewhere in Asia even after reaching a peace deal for China.

The world’s most valuable startup competes with Singapore-based Grab for ride-hailing customers in South-East Asia, a region that also includes Malaysia and Vietnam, while also tackling Go-Jek in Indonesia and going head-to-head with Ola in India.

Didi is in an alliance with Grab, Old and Lyft Inc. that unites four rivals to Uber. It’s not clear what impact the China deal will have on that alliance.

Grab chief executive officer Anthony Tan sent an internal memo to employees yesterday, reassuring them Didi’s victory showed that local companies are better positioned for dominance of the local market and he expected Uber to put more resources into the region.

Grab operates in 30 cities across six countries. Having raised more than US$15bil and valued at US$68bil, Uber has a long bench of investors from venture capitalists and hedge funds to sovereign wealth funds.

Since its inception in 2012, Grab has raised at least US$680mil, based on disclosed information, with investors including Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd, Tiger Global Management LLC, Hillhouse Capital Management Ltd, SoftBank Group Corp, China Investment Corp and Didi.

Under the Didi deal, Uber and its backers will have a 20 percent economic interest in China’s largest ride-sharing company. — Bloomberg

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Slippery Oil prices plunging create bad-loan pain for S'pore banks, Swiber to restructure

DBS, OCBC and UOB exposed to downturn in energy sector

The plunge in oil prices is catching up with Singapore’s three largest banks.

Last week, Swiber Holdings Ltd., a small Singapore company that provides construction services for international oil and gas projects, filed a petition to liquidate its operations, after facing payment demands from creditors at a time when its business was under pressure. DBS Group Holdings Ltd., one of Swiber’s largest lenders, said it only expects to recover about half of the S$700 million ($522 million) it loaned to the firm and its units. Swiber subsequently said it’s dropping the liquidation in favor of a restructure plan.

DBS and Singapore’s two other large banks, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. and United Overseas Bank Ltd., are exposed to the downturn in the energy sector as a result of their lending to local companies which provide construction, shipping and maintenance services to the oil and gas industry. Many of those companies are suffering as the plunge in crude prices since 2014 curtailed exploration and other activity by oil and gas producers.

The financial health of the energy-services companies is the “key concern” for UOB over the next one or two years, Chief Executive Officer Wee Ee Cheong said at a media briefing Thursday on the bank’s second-quarter results. The bank’s exposure to Swiber is “manageable,” Wee said, though he noted that the wider difficulties in the oil and gas services industry were a factor behind the 17 percent climb in UOB’s nonperforming assets for the second quarter.

Debt Restructuring

Swiber said it will drop its liquidation application in a statement on Friday. Instead, the company plans to operate under a judicial management, which would allow it to continue operating under court supervision while it attempts to turn its business around. Some of its lenders had sought judicial management to recover more of their loans, according to people familiar with the talks who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

“I presume it helps them buy time but it’s uncertain how viable these oil-services companies are if oil prices remain low for an extended period of time,” said Alan Richardson, a Hong Kong-based fund manager at Samsung Asset Management, which owns DBS shares. “The indirect victims of these bankruptcies are the banks who are lending money to them.”

Shares of DBS were little changed at S$15.40 as of 11:02 a.m. local time on Monday, paring this year’s loss to 7.7 percent. OCBC gained 0.8 percent and UOB rose 0.6 percent.

Oil has slipped about 19 percent from its recent peak in early June, ending a recovery that saw prices almost double from a 12-year low in February. Prices are falling again as U.S. producers increased drilling amid a glut of crude and fuel supplies that are at the highest seasonal level in at least two decades.

Moody’s Downgrade

The recent recovery in oil prices from their lows has provided only modest relief, OCBC Chief Executive Officer Samuel Tsien indicated Thursday in a media briefing on the bank’s second-quarter results, which included a 61 percent jump in nonperforming assets.

“We cannot say it’s going to be the bottom yet. We may have two more quarters to go,” Tsien said in response to a question on the rise in delinquent energy sector loans.

Oil and gas-related loans made up 5.3 percent of gross lending by Singapore banks as of December, a higher proportion than at banks in Korea, Thailand and the European Union, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The deteriorating quality of the Singapore banks’ loans to energy firms, as well as weaker regional economies, prompted Moody’s to downgrade its outlook for the three largest lenders on June 30.

UOB and OCBC’s exposures to offshore marine services companies amounted to 13 percent to 18 percent of their common equity Tier 1 capital and loan-loss reserves at the end of June, Moody’s said in a statement Monday.

DBS is due to report its second-quarter results on Aug. 8.

In a sign of how fast the bad-loan problems are worsening, OCBC said new nonperforming assets jumped 91 percent to S$924 million in the second quarter, mainly because of companies linked to the oil and gas support services sector. Newly soured assets at UOB more than doubled to S$802 million, from S$372 million a year ago.

“New nonperforming-loan generation was the highest seen in this NPL cycle so far,” Aakash Rawat, a bank analyst at UBS Group AG in Singapore, said in a report last week. “While this was cushioned somewhat by recoveries and upgrades this quarter, it is debatable whether this will continue to be the case in future.”

The SGX Oil & Gas Index, which tracks 25 locally listed firms, fell to a record low last week after news of Swiber’s problems surfaced on Thursday. Among the biggest decliners on the index was Ezra Holdings Ltd., which provides engineering and construction services to the offshore oil and gas sector. Ezra shares plunged 17 percent last week.

Another indicator of the woes among Singapore oil and gas service firms comes from the bond markets. A total of 10 Singapore-listed firms in the sector, including Swiber, have asked bondholders to loosen their covenants so far this year, versus eight in all of 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That includes efforts to extend the maturity of debt and loosen covenants requiring companies to maintain certain leverage levels.

Oil-related firms have S$1.4 billion of Singapore-dollar securities maturing through 2018, with S$325 million due by the end of this year, according to Bloomberg-compiled data on July 18.

Among the three large Singapore banks, only DBS has disclosed its exposure to Swiber. OCBC isn’t listed among the oil and gas services firm’s main bankers in its 2015 annual report. UOB’s Wee didn’t quantify the bank’s lending to Swiber at the Thursday media briefing. - Bloomberg

Swiber Holdings to restructure its business

Big exposure: People queue up to withdraw money from DBS automated teller machines at a mall in Singapore. DBS Group Holdings Ltd, South-East Asia’s biggest lender, said it has about S700mil (US523mil) in total exposure to Swiber. – Reuters

SINGAPORE: Swiber Holdings Ltd, the Singapore-based offshore oil and gas services group, said it was dropping liquidation plans and intends to restructure its business following talks with the company's major financial creditor.

Swiber plans to operate under so-called judicial management, according to a statement to the Singapore exchange last Friday. The arrangement would allow the company to continue operating under court supervision while attempting to turn around the business.

Some of its lenders had sought judicial management to recover more of their loans, according to people familiar with the talks who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

Swiber filed a petition last Wednesday to wind up and liquidate itself after facing US$25.9mil of demands from creditors.

The company had US$1.43bil in liabilities and US$1.99bil in assets at the end of March, according to its financial statements.

News of Swiber's liquidation plans dragged down the SGX Oil & Gas Index to a new low. Local companies that rely on contracts within the offshore oil and gas market are reeling from a collapse in oil prices.

Last year, a measure of the country's bad-loan ratio reached the highest level since 2009, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

The Singapore bourse said last Thursday it will be undertaking a “thorough investigation” into developments at Swiber after the company made key disclosures only after queries from the regulator.

Swiber on July 11 said it failed to get a US$200mil equity injection from AMTC Ltd, which had agreed to subscribe to preference shares.

DBS Group Holdings Ltd, South-East Asia's biggest lender, said last Thursday it has about S$700mil (US$523mil) in total exposure to Swiber. The bank said it expects to recover half of that amount.

Swiber in June redeemed S$130mil of 5.125% notes and in July redeemed S$75mil of 7% securities.

It has four more Singapore dollar bonds worth a total of S$460mil outstanding, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. – Bloomberg

Slippery slope for oil

Prices unlikely to go up too high for the rest of the year

PETALING JAYA: The continued oil supply glut in the market could mean a sustained low oil price environment, especially in the short to medium term.

The oil supply glut does not seem to be abating, with oil majors preferring to pump and store oil at the moment instead of cutting production.

According to unconfirmed reports, India is mulling over the idea of setting up a strategic petroleum reserve to store oil, similar to the ones that have been established in the United States and China.

As it is now, the ample amount of oil that has been extracted from underground is making its way to even more storage above ground. For instance, very large crude carriers (VLCCs) are increasingly being used for the storage of excess oil, with the tankers lying idle offshore in places such as the coasts of the United Kingdom.

According to the Financial Times, the supertankers have become the temporary centre to store excess oil and the ships are found off the coast of Scotland, where sea conditions are rough.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its latest Oil Market Report said that non-Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) production remains on course to fall by 0.9 million barrels per day (mmbd) this year, before staging a modest recovery in 2017.

However, the IEA said production from Opec countries has seen steady growth in recent years, with notable increases contributed by Iraq in 2015 and Iran in 2016.

“Our chart shows that, in fact, the oil output from the region rose to a record high in June, with production above 31 mmbd for the third month running. As such, the Middle East market share of global oil supplies rose to 35%, the highest since the late 1970s,” the IEA said in its report.

According to analysts, these concerns may return to haunt oil prices and US$40 could be the new normal for the time being.

Oil prices have staged a strong recovery since their January 2016 lows, gaining some 56% to their seven-month high of US$52.31 last month. The commodity, however, has since lost almost half of its gains.

It had gained on expectations by oil companies and Opec producers that the worst was over after hitting its January 2016 lows. However, Bloomberg reported that oil declined again in its biggest monthly drop in a year, as US producers increased drilling for a fifth week.

The increase in drilling by US producers came amid a glut of crude and fuel supplies that are at the highest seasonal level in at least two decades.

Oil prices have lost some 20% from their June 2016 seven-month highs and were last traded at US$41.63 per barrel.

Analysts said that oil could keep trending lower in the immediate term and that if it breaks the US$40 level, could challenge the next key psychological price mark of US$35.

Interpacific Research’s head of research Pong Teng Siew told StarBiz that he was “quite sure” that oil would be lower as short bets have piled up due to fundamentals.

“Many traders have reversed their long positions and have taken up shorts instead which will drive the oil market lower. My thinking is that the oil market today has got a tendency of being lower than what anyone expects, especially if momentum carries it through,” Pong said.

“I think it will drop below US$40 per barrel, and there is a likelihood that it will keep surprising people at this point in time. It also does not seem that the worst is truly over, and my worry is that the number of US rigs, especially in shale oil, appear to be on the upswing and there is no telling how much more is to come,” he added.

Pong noted that the demand side has picked up since January 2016, but that the take-up pace has been slower than before with the growth in supply.

“Demand was (then) tethered to China’s oil purchases for its strategic petroleum reserves, but that is now at full (capacity) and has seen demand tapering off, resulting in lower oil prices,” he said.

The IEA said that while market balance was seen in mid-summer 2016, the existence of very high oil stocks is a threat to the recent stability of oil prices, noting that in the first quarter of this year, refinery runs growth was 60% higher than refined product demand growth.

“Despite the regular upward revisions to demand that we have seen in recent reports, there are signs that momentum is easing, and although stocks are close to topping out, they are at such elevated levels, especially for products for which demand growth is slackening, that they remain a major dampener on oil prices,” the IEA said.

Social Economic Research Centre’s executive director and independent economist Lee Heng Guie said that fundamentals today may cause oil prices to continue to remain weak.

Lee said at this point in time, there may be a slight challenge when the next budget is tabled or planned, but that there is comfort that the oil revenue to the Government’s coffers is now at a low level of about 19%.

“The goods and services tax (GST) will make up for the shortfall, but this also depends largely on the health of the local consumer. If household spending remains cautious, then there will be an impact to the GST collections,” he added. - By daniel Khoo The Star/Asian News Network

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Bears crowd Ezra as Swiber’s woes signal oil risks
Singapore’s Ezra to seek fresh capital to weather slump
Refiners start slowing from summer peak


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