HONG KONG — Some of China’s biggest technology players are backing a plan to invest nearly $12 billion in one of the country’s telecommunications giants, the latest move in a broader government push to shake up the country’s bloated state-run companies.

But it is an effort that, so far, has left experts unimpressed.

The telecom giant, China Unicom, said on Wednesday that its parent company would raise $11.7 billion by selling shares to a number of Chinese firms as well as to employees. All together, the outside companies would have roughly a one-third share in the Unicom group. China Unicom said the funds would be used to help pay for development of a next-generation cellular and data network, among other uses. It also “expects to further optimize its corporate governance structure in accordance with the market-oriented principles,” it said in a filing…

As American universities’ interest in courting international students intensifies, an online lender that caters to them has drawn significant new financing.

Prodigy Finance, the lender that makes loans to international postgraduate students, said on Sunday that it had raised $40 million in new equity financing. It also said it had secured a $200 million credit line from an undisclosed bank.

The new financing comes at a time of keen interest in international students among American universities — and a decline in applications from those students that has begun to unnerve educators…

Lender to Foreign Students Raises $40 Million in Financing

• S&P 500 has second worst day of year as Trump hits GOP leaders
• Terrorist attack in Barcelona adds to unease in global markets

A sense of growing unease gripped financial markets as President Donald Trump exacerbated the controversy sparked by a racist rally in Virginia and terrorists struck a crowded street in Barcelona.

U.S. stocks retreated, with the S&P 500 Index posting its second biggest one-day decline of the year, and a measure of market volatility spiked higher. Treasuries rose with the yen as investors sought havens. Gold jumped…

Markets Roiled on Trump Stance Tensions: Markets Wrap

• America’s oldest mutual fund stands its ground in indexing age
• ‘You don’t want to screw up anything that was the first’

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Kevin Beatty can take the long view on investing. Ninety-three-years-long, to be exact.

From his perch in Boston, Beatty co-manages the oldest mutual fund in America, if not the world. Opened in the Roaring Twenties, when Calvin Coolidge was president, the Massachusetts Investors Trust has weathered 16 recessions, roughly 20 bear markets and worse…

Why This Fund’s 256,766% Return Still Doesn’t Beat the Market

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal has asserted that bankers and traders didn’t go to jail for their bad behavior in the years leading up to the financial crisis “because they haven’t committed any crimes.”

“Politicians and journalists have made careers of lamenting that too few bankers have been convicted of crimes,” the editorial writers said. “They overlook that, at least in America, to prove a crime you have to have enough evidence and that a mistake is not necessarily criminal.”…

The Whale That Should Not Have Gotten Away

Take the money and run is the new Uber benchmark.

The ride-hailing company, valued at nearly $70 billion in its most recent funding round, is facing multiple controversies, managerial turmoil and huge losses. The early investor Benchmark may be loath to give in to demands to sell its 13 percent stake. But it would help restore some stability and let the venture capital firm rake in billions of dollars.

Benchmark, which led Uber’s Series A funding round in early 2011, has injected nearly $30 million into the company, according to fellow shareholders. Now, though, it has turned to the courts to try to stop Uber’s co-founder and former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, from participating in board business…

One June evening last year, some of New York’s most prominent Indian-Americans gathered at a gated house in Rye, N.Y.

A few dozen Indian-American businessmen and their bejeweled wives, some decked out in colorful salwar kameezes, had arrived at the home of Ajit Jain, a top executive at Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, say people who were invited to the dinner. They were there to welcome back an old friend, Rajat K. Gupta.

Only two months before, Mr. Gupta had finished a two-year prison sentence for divulging corporate secrets to Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund titan now serving the longest sentence ever for insider trading…

Oscar Insurance Corp., the health-insurance startup focused on selling Obamacare plans, posted a smaller first-half loss than a year earlier, according to state regulatory filings.

Oscar, whose co-founders include Joshua Kushner and Mario Schlosser, lost $57.6 million in the first half of the year in Texas, New York and California. That’s down from $83 million a year earlier. In Texas and California, the company brought in more in premiums than it spent on care, though in New York its health costs still exceeded premiums…

Obamacare Startup Oscar Posts $57.6 Million First-Half Loss

SAN FRANCISCO — Uber’s board has voted to move forward on proposals by two investment groups to buy shares in the ride-hailing service and is considering a third offer, with any final decision set to affect who gains the upper hand at the company.

Over the last week, the privately held company’s board voted to take the next step on investment interest from SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate. It is still considering an offer from a consortium led by Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in the company, to buy Uber shares from an existing investor. The board also earlier voted to go forward with a proposal from a coalition led by the Dragoneer Investment Group to buy stock from Uber’s existing shareholders…

Amid reports Thursday that Stephen Sanger, chairman of the Wells Fargoboard, may step down in the coming months, all eyes are on the bank’s directors and their oversight of the troubled institution.

While some Wells Fargo shareholders are urging the bank’s directors to sharpen their scrutiny in the wake of continuing misconduct, it’s noteworthy that new regulatory guidance put forward by the Federal Reserve Board, the nation’s top financial regulator, would go in the opposite direction. In essence, the Fed says, big-bank board members need to take a load off…

The Fed Wants to Make Life Easier for Big-Bank Directors

• Danish finance minister says government will fight plan
• Expert panel says extra Basel requirements are unwarranted

Denmark’s five biggest banks face as much as $15 billion in new capital requirements under proposed changes to global banking rules, according to an expert panel created by the government.

Danske Bank A/S the country’s biggest financial group, and others will together see their capital requirements rise 27-39 percent, equivalent to 64-92 billion kroner ($15 billion), the panel said on Friday. In the same report, the expert panel rejected the need for the additional capital burden. And the government underscored its commitment to fighting the requirement…

• Central bank may purge mortgages, keep some sovereign bonds
• U.S. 30-year fixed home-loan rate has risen from record low

For all the talk that Janet Yellen’s plan to shrink the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet will hurt Treasuries, U.S. mortgage bonds face a bigger test.

The securities are already lagging behind Treasuries for the first time since 2011. Investors are demanding 29 basis points of extra yield to buy the bonds instead of Treasuries, with the spread almost tripling from 2016’s low, based on Bloomberg data. Firms including Allianz Investment Management and Federated Investors say the spread widening probably isn’t over…

• Korean won makes up more than 40% of ethereum trading volume
• Bitcoin volatility is about 10 times higher than gold

Some investors are turning to an unlikely safe haven as the rhetoric between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea intensifies.

Bitcoin, ethereum and other digital currencies, among the most volatile assets around, are gaining in part as traditional refuges such as gold and U.S. Treasuries lose some of their luster…

Markets’ Wildest Assets Are Becoming a Haven While Korea Tension Mounts

• Coinbase receiving money from IVP, Spark Capital, others
• An ether price crash and confusion have upset customers

Coinbase Inc., the digital currency exchange that in the past two months suffered a trading crash and upset customers over how it handled the bitcoin split, received a $100 million investment from a group led by IVP.

Spark Capital, Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures, Section 32 and Draper Associates also participated, according to a statement Thursday. Coinbase plans to use the money to expand its engineering and customer support staff, open a New York office for its professional trading platform GDAX and grow Toshi, “a mobile browser for the ethereum network that provides universal access to financial services,” said Megan Hernbroth, a spokeswoman…

• Justice Department asks judge to put forfeiture cases on hold
• Billions of dollars were allegedly looted from Malaysian fund

The U.S. is moving forward with a criminal investigation into money stolen from a Malaysian state investment fund that allegedly was used to acquire about $1.7 billion in real estate, art, jewelry and other assets.

Court filings by the Justice Department Thursday show the U.S. is escalating its probe in a worldwide effort to track how much of the money that was raised by 1Malaysia Development Bhd. was used to pay for luxury real estate in New York, London and Beverly Hills, AS film productions, private jets, yachts and more…

• Bond offering carves out Gigafactory 1 from curbs on borrowing
• Terms could allow Musk’s venture to add layers of senior debt

Elon Musk calls Tesla’s mammoth battery factory in Nevada an “alien mothership.” For the carmaker’s newest lenders, the plant might as well be in outer space.

The billionaire coined that moniker for Tesla Inc.’s Gigafactory 1 as he waxed poetic about his company’s future on an Aug. 7 call with would-be bond buyers. It’s the world’s biggest battery factory and central to Tesla’s plans for mass production of its new Model 3 electric car. Musk invited his audience to come tour the plant near Reno…

• U.S., German, U.K. shares all climbed in period since crisis
• August 9, 2007 marked day BNP Paribas halted fund redemptions

Ten years after the event that marked the start of the credit crunch, stock prices in most leading economies have more than recovered from the turmoil that followed. Those in the U.S. have powered ahead, while their peers in Germany, Japan and even the Brexit-mired U.K. have risen comfortably above the levels they stood at back before all hell broke loose.

• Fangda Carbon’s surging volume sparks exchange warning
• Stock has gained 200% since late June in a sleepy China market

Fangda Carbon New Material Co. isn’t typically a name that jumps to mind when one thinks of the world’s most-actively traded stocks.

Yet for reasons unknown, shares of this obscure Chinese maker of graphite electrodes are suddenly changing hands at a pace usually reserved for the global equity market’s crème de la crème.

• Trump says threats from North Korea to be met with fire, fury
• Yen leads gains among G-10 currencies, gold advances

Stocks in Asia declined with U.S. equity-index futures after President Donald Trump delivered a warning to North Korea amid rising tensions between the nations. The yen and gold climbed.

Volatility gauges from the U.S. to Japan rose after Trump said further threats from the country would be met with “fire and fury.” His comments followed a report in the Washington Post, citing a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis, that Pyongyang successfully developed a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could fit onto its missiles. North Korea said it’s examining an operational plan for firing a ballistic missile toward Guam. Crude dipped below $49 a barrel…

• Notes market’s signals to miners and the effect on spending
• Average funding rate for banks fallen about 10 bps recently

Australian firms outside mining have a ready source of funds in bond markets should they opt to invest and expand their businesses, Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor Christopher Kent said.

Non-mining companies’ “investment demand remains modest,” Kent said in the text of a speech at Bloomberg’s Sydney office Wednesday. “However, as is the case across a range of funding sources, finance appears to be readily available to creditworthy firms in fixed income markets at favorable prices.”

• Reducing leverage risks touted as top priority for regulators
• Wealth management products, entrusted loan levels remain high

China’s much-vaunted campaign to tackle its leverage problem has captured headlines this year. But to understand why they’re taking on the challenge — and the threat it could pose to the world’s second-largest economy — you need to dig into the mountain.

Characterized in state media as the “original sin” of China’s financial system, leverage has swelled over the past decade — partly because policy makers were trying to cushion a slowdown in growth from the old normal of 10 percent plus. What’s fueled the leverage has been a rapid expansion in household and corporate wealth looking for higher returns in a system where bank interest rates have been held down…

• Move is second high-profile prosecution halted in recent weeks
• Charges were thrown out in ‘London Whale’ fraud case in July

The U.S. moved to drop fraud charges against Benjamin Wey, the founder of the private equity firm New York Global Group, after a judge threw out thousands of pages of documents she said were illegally seized by the FBI in 2012.

• Firm to continue core investment strategy with new pool
• Dry powder reached highest level since 2007 with $1.6 trillion

TowerBrook Capital Partners is in early talks with investors to raise as much as 5 billion euros ($5.9 billion) for its next private equity fund, people familiar with the matter said.

The fund will be used to continue TowerBrook’s core investment strategy of investing in large and mid-market companies facing complex structural issues, said one the people, who asked not to be identified as the discussions are private. TowerBrook looks for investments that may have a distressed parent company or be facing disagreements between shareholders and management, according to its website…

• Startup said to seek sale as lending industry struggles
• Hoping to get bids of $200 million after raising $300 million

Earnest Inc., a financial-technology startup backed by venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz, is working with Barclays Plc to find a buyer.

The San Francisco-based company, which offers student loan refinancing as well as personal loans, is hoping to secure bids for around $200 million, according to people familiar with the matter. There has been more than one bid so far but it’s unclear at what price, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private…

U.S. consumer credit-card debt just passed an ominous milestone, beating a record set just before the global financial system almost collapsed in 2008.

Outstanding card loans reached $1.02 trillion in June, data from the Federal Reserve show, as lenders including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. compete to sign up cardholders who may carry balances — a relatively lucrative business in a prolonged period of low interest rates.

The bet is that this time it won’t end so badly. In 2008, a drop in home prices spiraled into a global financial meltdown, and after the jobless rate surged toward 10 percent, banks wrote off more than $100 billion in credit-card loans over the next two years…

• Accord brings company’s reserves over devices to $2.6 billion
• Other mesh makers still face thousands of suits over implants

Endo International Plc said it agreed to set aside $775 million to resolve the last batch of lawsuits alleging the company’s vaginal-mesh implants eroded in some women, leaving them incontinent and in pain.

Endo’s settlement of the remaining 22,000 mesh suits means the company has now set aside more than $2.6 billion to wipe out cases over the flawed medical devices, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Xi’s leadership conclave has guaranteed economic stability
• Harvest Global Investment lifted allocation to China stocks

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The Chinese leadership has this year made its strongest commitment yet to curb financial risks and rein in spendthrift local officials, yet the campaign has spurred barely a ripple of concern among global investors.

• Agency reports results from latest Dodd-Frank Act stress tests
• Aid draw in worst scenario would leave $158 billion available

Mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could need nearly $100 billion in bailout money in the event of a new economic crisis, according to stress test results released Monday by their regulator.

The companies would need to draw between $34.8 billion and $99.6 billion in U.S. Treasury aid under a “severely adverse” scenario, depending on how they treated assets used to offset taxes, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in its report. The losses would leave $158.4 billion to $223.2 billion available to the companies under their bailout agreements…

• ate hikes may be policy mistakes but won’t fight the bank
• Boosting U.S. duration and Canadian curve steepeners

Don’t fight the central bank, the saying goes. Kamyar Hazaveh, who leads a team overseeing C$11 billion ($8.8 billion) in fixed income at CI Investments Inc., is taking it to heart.

Despite believing the Bank of Canada was wrong to raise interest rates last month, Hazaveh’s team is favoring U.S. Treasuries over their northern counterparts.

Booms and busts in the market made it tough for companies to keep up.

The vast majority of S&P 500 companies don’t have enough money set aside to meet all their obligations to current and future retirees. There’s a total gap of at least $375 billion for the 200 largest plans. This is how they got here…

Corporate Employers Flee Pensions With Gap Topping $375 Billion

A sustained spike in mortgage-arrears data published by the Bank of England had left home loan providers in the U.K. puzzled. Turns out some lenders were entering incorrect data.

The central bank has asked a number of mortgage providers to re-submit data for some home-loan statistics following a joint investigation with the Financial Conduct Authority, a person with knowledge of the matter said. It found some lenders were overstating arrears by including loans which should not have been added, the person said, asking not to be identified because the probe was confidential.

• Griffin’s Kensington and Wellington funds rose 2.3% in July
• Stock wagers contributed the most to the funds’ performance

The two main funds at Ken Griffin’s $27 billion Citadel have gained almost 7 percent this year, helped by its equity bets.

The Kensington and Wellington funds, which trade across asset classes, each rose 6.8 percent in the first seven months of the year, boosted by a 2.3 percent increase in July, a person familiar with the matter said. Stock wagers made by the firm’s Global Equities and Surveyor units contributed the most to the gains, said the person, who declined to be named because the information is private…

New York (AP) — The mayor of New York City wants to tax the wealthiest 1 percent to fund repairs and improvements to the beleaguered subway system.

The proposal comes as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, both Democrats, continue to squabble over responsibility for paying for repairs to the nation’s largest transit system that has seen growing delays, mechanical failures, power outages and even derailments.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Joseph Lhota recently unveiled an emergency plan to stabilize the system. The governor offered to split the cost of the plan with the city, but the mayor refused to commit money to support it…

• Banks raise interest-only loan rates to meet regulatory target
• Sydney quarterly house-price growth slows to 2.2%, data show

One of the key engines of Australia’s five-year housing boom is losing steam.

Property investors, who have helped stoke soaring home prices in Australia, are being squeezed as regulators impose restrictions to rein in lending. The nation’s biggest banks have this year raised minimum deposits, tightened eligibility requirements and increased rates on interest-only mortgages — a form of financing favored by people buying homes to rent out or hold as an investment…

Australia Slams the Brakes on Property Investment