Hong Kong stocks slipped after a weak open; HSI was down 0.52% and the Hang Seng Tech Index down 1.11% at midday. Oil names outperformed—PetroChina (00857.HK) rose over 2%. Large banks traded higher: Agricultural Bank of China (01288.HK) and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (01398.HK) each gained more than 1%. Green power, agriculture, paper and education sectors were active. Gold stocks plunged—Zijin Gold International (02259.HK) fell over 5%. Lithium battery, PCB, Chinese brokerages and

The EBRD said on Thursday war-related shocks are slowing growth across many emerging markets. Its regional outlook cited higher energy prices, rising borrowing costs, a European drought and the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and now expects GDP across 40 covered economies to expand 2.5% this year, 0.6pp below its June forecast and the second consecutive downgrade. Chief economist Beata Javorcik warned multiple pressure points—from diesel and wheat costs to borrowing rates—are accumulating and pose substantial downside risk. Iraq and Lebanon suffered the biggest cuts: Iraq is now forecast to contract about 12% this year as Hormuz closures curb oil exports; Lebanon is seen shrinking roughly 5% amid the Israel conflict. The EBRD also trimmed forecasts for Ukraine, citing intensified Russian attacks, and for Turkey as persistent inflation tightens financing conditions.

At the Cloud Summit, Alibaba Cloud and Intel announced a collaboration to build a lightweight cloud browser for large-scale Agent deployments, focusing on browser-engine optimization, hardware acceleration and high-density cloud-side deployment to scale Agentic Browser in agent scenarios. The companies also co-developed Alibaba Cloud’s Panjiu Gen9 servers powered by Intel Xeon 6 processors and will pursue software-and-hardware co-optimization for AI-driven block storage.