Reuters Business News

Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd will close its three cabin crew bases in the United States, the airline said on Friday, laying off 286 staff as the coronavirus pandemic has virtually halted global travel.

Most U.S. firms in China currently have no plans to relocate production to other parts of the country or abroad due to the coronavirus, but there is less certainty about the long term due to growing worries over U.S.-China decoupling, a survey showed.

China's economy shrank 6.8% in January-March from a year earlier, official data showed on Friday, the first such decline since at least 1992 when quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) records began.

Asian stocks gained on Friday as President Donald Trump's plans to gradually re-open the U.S. economy offset data that showed China suffered its worst economic contraction on record due to the coronavirus outbreak.

China's economy shrank for the first time since at least 1992 in the first quarter, as the coronavirus outbreak paralysed production and spending, raising pressure on authorities to do more to stop mounting job losses.

China's daily crude oil throughput in March hit the lowest level since December 2018 with state refiners maintaining deep output cuts as the coronavirus pandemic eroded fuel demand.

During the early days of March, Jill Fopiano was having trouble sleeping, waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning, maybe 4 o'clock. She'd been watching news of a virus in China, first out the corner of her eye – was this like swine flu? – then more squarely, as headlines rushed in about outbreaks on the west coast of America. Fopiano wondered, in the darkness, if she should shut down her office in Boston's upscale Back Bay neighborhood.

China's economic performance in the second quarter of this year is expected to be much better than in the first, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.

Real estate investment in China fell 7.7% in the first three months of 2020 from a year earlier, official data showed on Friday.

China's industrial output fell a less steeper-than-expected 1.1% in March from a year earlier, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Friday, as the coronavirus crisis and strict containment measures severely disrupted the world's second-largest economy.

Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman told shareholders on Thursday he "can promise" the bank will miss its medium-term financial targets again in the current quarter, as the economic shutdown caused by the novel coronavirus will continue to upend the global and U.S. economy.

Oil prices rose on Friday with Brent gaining nearly 3% after President Donald Trump laid out guidelines on reviving a U.S. economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic that has punched a huge hole in global demand for crude and refined products.

President Donald Trump rolled out his guidelines for how the United States can reopen businesses and schools shut down by the coronavirus Thursday evening.

Honda Motor Co said it has remodeled 50 of its minivans to transport COVID-19 patients to hospitals and quarantine facilities in Japan, sealing off the rear section of the vehicles to keep drivers safe from infection.

A $350 billion emergency U.S. loan program to help small businesses keep workers on their payrolls amid the novel coronavirus disruption has run out of funds, the U.S. Small Business Administration said on Thursday.

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would start notifying users who had engaged with false posts about COVID-19 which could cause physical harm, such as drinking bleach to cure the virus, and connect them to accurate information.

Neiman Marcus Group skipped a debt payment due this week, the latest sign of a cash crunch pushing the U.S. luxury department store chain to the brink of a possible bankruptcy after it temporarily closed stores amid the coronavirus pandemic.

California's Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted on Thursday to approve the merger of wireless carriers T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp, marking the final approval for a $23 billion deal which closed on April 1.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called President Donald Trump's guidelines for reopening the economy "vague and inconsistent" and said more coronavirus testing needed to be done.

Asian stocks look set to bounce on Friday to recover towards a one-month high as investors, following Wall Street's lead overnight, sought silver linings in a run of data that showed the world is in its worst recession in decades.