First a bit of good news. Japanese shares posted a small gain during the morning break, putting the Nikkei on a 13 straight days of gains and matching the record set 17 years ago. A sad news in China where a passenger boat carrying more than 400 passengers sank, and as of this writing, one person died, while hundreds are still missing.
Salary cuts at Chinese bourses. China’s six stock, commodity and futures exchanges cut the salaries of their top executives by as much as two-thirds to align their pay to those working at other state-owned firms. The salary cuts were backdated to January and affected those working for Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, Zhengzhou and Dalian commodity exchanges, Shanghai Futures Exchange, and China Financial Futures Exchange. Caixin
Chinese luxury bag smuggler fined, jailed. A Chinese court has slapped a 550,000 yuan ($88.7 million) to a man for smuggling luxury bags such as Prada to China worth 1.2 million yuan. He was also imprisoned for 18 months. South China Morning Post (paywall)
Ship sinks in China. Carrying 458 passengers, the ship sank while sailing in the Yangtze River. Eight people has so far been rescued, including the boat’s captain and engineer, while hundreds are still missing, and at least one person died. Reuters/BBC
Japanese firms invest in fund for startups. Panasonic and Fujitsu are among the more than 10 companies that will infuse 12.5 billion yen ($100 million) into Draper Nexis Ventures, an investment firm based both in Japan and Silicon Valley. The firm will invest in technology firms based in Japan and the U.S. Nikkei Asian Review
Nikkei rises for a 13th day, matches record set in 1988. The Nikkei ended the morning session 0.07% higher, as a weaker yen boosted export-related stocks. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was down 0.8%, while the Shanghai Composite Index was flat. Nikkei Asian Review/MarketWatch
Photo credit: Will De Freitas via Flickr