U.S. stock futures slipped on Sunday night as investors braced for a big week of corporate earnings and lawmakers continued coronavirus stimulus negotiations. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures traded 60 points lower, or 0.2%. S&P 500 futures fell 0.2% along with Nasdaq 100 futures. McDonald’s, Pfizer, Alphabet, Apple and AMD are among the companies slated to release their latest quarterly figures this week.

Through Friday’s close 128 S&P 500 companies had reported earnings, with 81% beating analyst expectations, according to Refinitiv. However, overall S&P 500 earnings have fallen more than 40% from the year-earlier period as the coronavirus pandemic takes a big bite out of corporate profits.

A new index focused on China's technology giants is set to give investors greater access to their growing dominance in Hong Kong's market. The new index will track the 30 largest tech companies listed in the city. The Hang Seng Tech Index will include Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding, Meituan Dianping and Xiaomi. The gauge would have achieved returns of 36.2 per cent for 2019 and 35.3 per cent for the first half of this year, according to compiler Hang Seng Indexes.

An Indian court has summoned Alibaba and its founder Jack Ma in a case in which a former employee in India says he was wrongfully fired after objecting to what he saw as censorship and fake news on company apps, documents seen by Reuters showed. The case comes weeks after India cited security concerns in banning Alibaba's UC News, UC Browser and 57 other Chinese apps after a clash between the two countries' forces on their border.

London-based HSBC bank has denied Chinese media reports that it had "framed" telecom giant Huawei or "fabricated evidence" that led to the arrest of a top company official. Washington's investigations into Huawei - for allegedly violating US sanctions on Iran - started before the bank's involvement with the company in late 2016, the lender said Saturday in its first public comments on Huawei's legal battle in North America.

China's soybean imports in June from top supplier Brazil soared to a record high, according to customs data released on Sunday, driven by growing demand for soybeans as China's pig herd recovers after deadly outbreaks of African swine fever.

Koh Brothers Group and its Catalist-listed subsidiary Koh Brothers Eco Engineering both expect to report a net loss for the six months ended June 30, owing to the adverse impact of Covid-19, they said on Friday.

Food manufacturer QAF said on Saturday that the meat processing unit of its Australian pork production business Rivalea has temporarily shut down its processing plant in Laverton, Melbourne with immediate effect. Rivalea’s 80 per cent-owned meat processing subsidiary, Diamond Valley Pork (DVP), shut its processing plant after five employees at the plant recorded positive Covid-19 test results.

Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto, backed by food delivery giant Meituan Dianping, has launched an initial public offering (IPO) of up to US$950 million, in one of the biggest US listings by Chinese companies this year. The five-year-old automaker, formerly known as CHJ Automotive, is selling 95 million American depositary shares (ADS) at an indicative range of US$8 to US$10 per share, according to its updated prospectus filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Source: SGX Masnet, The Business Times, Bloomberg, Channel NewsAsia, Reuters, PSR