• U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday and discussed the threat posed by North Korea, while putting pressure on Beijing over trade.
"Both leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula," the White House said of Trump's call with Xi.
"President Trump reiterated his determination to seek more balanced trade relations with America’s trading partners," it said.
• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party suffered an historic defeat in an election in the Japanese capital on Sunday, signaling trouble ahead for the premier, who has suffered from slumping support because of a favoritism scandal.
On the surface, the Tokyo Metropolitan assembly election was a referendum on Governor Yuriko Koike's year in office, but the dismal showing for Abe's party is also a stinging rebuke of his 4-1/2-year-old administration.
Later vote counts showed the LDP was certain to post its worst-ever result, winning at most 37 seats compared with 57 before the election, NHK said, while Koike's party and allies were assured a majority.
• Manufacturing activity in Asia's tech producing economies expanded in June, helped by growing global demand for electronics products, but headwinds in external markets could mean a moderation in growth in the second half of the year.
Private sector surveys of manufacturers in Asia showed the factory sectors of China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan picked up in June, driven largely by a recovery in exports.
Factory Purchasing Managers' Indexes for South Korea, Japan, Taiwan Vietnam and India all remained above the 50-mark that separates contraction from expansion on a monthly basis. And all of these indexes, except for Japan and India, rose from the previous month, indicating an acceleration in expansion.
• Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) has become the latest financial firm to open a subsidiary in Frankfurt in the wake of the Brexit vote.
The Japanese giant will register its core banking unit in the German city as it fears its UK subsidiary "could face future restrictions" once Britain crashes out of the EU.
• Oil futures set off on a positive start Monday as the first decline in U.S. oil-drilling activity since January gave the market a fresh tailwind after seven-consecutive sessions of price gains.
The drop in Baker Hughes’ weekly count, coming after a record 23-straight weeks of rising numbers of active rigs, helped stoke sentiment that shale producers may have hit a bottleneck amid prolonged low prices.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in August CLQ7, +0.63% recently traded up 0.8% at $46.39 a barrel in the Globex electronic session. September Brent crude LCOU7, +0.51% on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose 0.6% to $49.08 a barrel.
Reference: Telegraph,Reuters,MarketWatch
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