Four dealmakers responsible for Carlyle Group Inc's Sub-Saharan Africa Fund are leaving to launch their own firm, Carlyle said on Wednesday, in the latest private equity retreat from the continent. Carlyle will remain active in Africa with its other funds, including Carlyle International Energy Partners. This makes Carlyle the latest private equity giant to reduce its Africa exposure and underscores the challenges of dealmaking for Western private equity firms used to large leveraged buyouts of mature companies that can be saddled with debt.

(Bloomberg) -- KKR & Co. said it negotiated its biggest Asian transaction, a $1.5 billion deal to buy stake in Mukesh Ambani’s India-based digital platform business, in 10 days.The New York-based private equity firm on Friday said it’s buying a 2.3% stake in Jio Platforms Ltd., the telecom and digital services holding company controlled by Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. The deal was done over Zoom calls, said Sanjay Nayar, chief executive officer of KKR’s India unit.KKR said Ambani’s goals of becoming a top e-commerce and payments operator in India, the world’s second-most populated nation, helped KKR accelerate the decision. Private equity firms often take months to conduct due diligence and negotiate terms of an investment.“We invested in Mukesh Ambani’s entrepreneurial vision backed by a world class management,” Nayar said in an interview. “The business model is scale-able to meet the demand of the aspiring Indians which will unleash demand.”KKR’s investment follows Ambani’s stake sales in Jio Platforms to Facebook Inc., Silver Lake and General Atlantic. Ambani, Asia’s richest man, has lured $10 billion of investments since April.“We are backing a winning story and it has a long way to go,” Nayar said. “We have not invested in a greenfield business.”KKR, which has also put money into technology-driven companies like enterprise solutions provider BMC Software Inc., ByteDance Ltd., owner of the TikTok social video platform, and Indonesia-based ride-hailing and food-delivery giant GoJek, said Jio was its biggest investment in the region.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, has lured more than $10 billion of investment for his India-based digital platform business in a month, even as the economy struggles under the world’s most stringent lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.New York-based KKR & Co. on Friday became the latest private equity firm to invest in Jio Platforms Ltd., the telecom and digital services holding company controlled by Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd., the Mumbai-based company said in a statement. The private equity fund will pay 113.7 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) for a 2.3% stake in Jio.Ambani has been selling stakes in Jio in support of a vow to bring net debt of more than $20 billion to zero at his oil, retail and telecommunications group before March 2021. The deals with U.S.-based giants from Facebook Inc. to Silver Lake and General Atlantic bolster Ambani’s plan to shift away from oil and petrochemicals toward faster-growing consumer businesses.“Reliance Industries is positioning itself as a global technology company with international technology and private equity players lining up for a Jio Platforms stake,” said Sudeep Anand, head of institutional research at IDBI Capital Market Services Ltd. The sales are also “another step toward achieving a zero net-debt company by calender year 2020,” he said.While global giants including Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc. have also made big bets on growth in India’s consumer markets, the companies have faced challenges in scaling their models online in India, where restrictions protect small retailers. Ambani has vowed to build an e-commerce business that works around the barriers by recruiting so-called kirana shops as partners.KKR said Friday its investment in Jio is it’s largest in Asia and that Ambani’s goals played a big role in a quick decision.“The business model is scalable to meet the demand of aspiring Indians,” Sanjay Nayar, head of KKR’s Indian business, said in an interview, adding that the PE firm completed the deal in 10 days. “We invested in Mukesh Ambani’s entrepreneurial vision backed by a world class management.”The fund has also put money into technology-driven companies like enterprise solutions provider BMC Software Inc., ByteDance Ltd., owner of the TikTok social video platform, and Indonesia-based ride-hailing and food-delivery giant GoJek.Ambani’s success in drawing big, seasoned tech investors to Jio comes despite a sharp drop in economic growth caused by the pandemic and uncertainty about how much damage will be done before the deadly pathogen is under control. The willingness of investors to bear those risks underscores Ambani’s appeal as a determined, capable empire builder and the prospects for using Jio’s roughly 400 million wireless phone users as a springboard into digital services.Jio Platforms combines the conglomerate’s digital assets with its wireless carrier, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., into a holding company aimed at becoming a top e-commerce and payments operator in India’s vast consumer market.Started in 2016, Reliance Jio is now India’s largest wireless carrier. The operator stormed past rivals by building a nationwide 4G network, then offering free calling and data services at prices established competitors with older networks could not match without losing money.(Updates with comment from KKR from sixth paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Is India’s richest man betting on a tech cold war?Petrochemicals czar Mukesh Ambani plans to list his fledgling digital business overseas, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of Jio Platforms Ltd.’s initial public offering, which is planned for the next 12 to 24 months.Going to the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq would make sense. U.S.-traded Chinese technology firms such as JD.com Inc. and NetEase Inc. are looking for an alternative home closer to the mainland in case tensions between Washington and Beijing escalate, as my colleague Nisha Gopalan wrote this week. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. held a secondary listing in Hong Kong in November. With Washington considering a range of sanctions against Chinese officials and firms as punishment for Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong, now may be the perfect time to pitch American investors on the potential of the other internet market with a billion-plus people.A splashy overseas foray will be an unusual step for a family that brought the retail equity culture to India. Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh’s late father who founded the empire, booked a football stadium in Mumbai in 1985 to hold a shareholders’ meeting for the polyester textile maker that he had floated eight years earlier. But then, Mukesh Ambani is already moving old furniture around as he pivots flagship Reliance Industries Ltd. away from an oversupplied energy and chemicals market. At the same time, he’s beefing up the balance sheet after a seven-year, $100 billion debt-fueled expansion. A big chunk of that was for Jio, the wireless carrier that has become India’s largest in less than four years.A $7 billion rights issue, Reliance’s first in three decades, buttressed by more than $10 billion raised in a month from the sale of shares in unlisted Jio Platforms may help cut the company’s $20 billion of net debt to zero before Ambani’s March 2021 target. A U.S. IPO should give Jio’s new backers, including Facebook Inc., KKR & Co., Silver Lake Partners and General Atlantic, a better valuation in a capital market that’s deeper than Mumbai’s.Will Wall Street be so hospitable as to give Ambani, say, a $100 billion valuation?  (Alibaba, a more mature business, was valued at $168 billion six years ago.) Jio Platforms, which is centered on the the 4G mobile network, is the cornerstone of Reliance’s emerging triple play on carriage, content and commerce. With almost 400 million customers under his belt, Ambani needs to prove he can garner at least $3 from each of them every month. Modest as that sounds, it isn’t an easy task when per-user revenue is at present only a little over half as much. The coronavirus lockdown has ravaged India’s economy, setting its growth prospects back perhaps by several years. Mass market consumers, who comprise Jio’s user base, have been badly hurt.That’s where a tech cold war may help. Wall Street investors have been able to profit from the explosion of e-commerce in China, even though the likes of Facebook and Amazon.com Inc. are largely shut out of the People’s Republic. If that access gets curbed by geopolitics, then Ambani’s story becomes more compelling. He can offer the vision of a vast retail network that has Facebook’s popular WhatsApp messaging system processing orders and payments for neighborhood shops connected digitally to a billion-plus buyers. That could be a big draw. A U.S. home is within Ambani’s reach, especially if Chinese firms are forced to vacate.  This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services. He previously was a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He has also worked for the Straits Times, ET NOW and Bloomberg News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinionSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- KKR & Co. said it will put $1 billion into a new data center venture in Europe, as private equity firms chase returns in the growing market for digital infrastructure assets.The investment firm is teaming up with industry veteran Franek Sodzawiczny to launch Global Technical Realty, which will develop and build data centers for large technology companies in Europe, it said in a press release Wednesday, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.Data centers are drawing increasing interest from private equity firms as more companies outsource the storage of vast information sets to third-party providers. Macquarie Group Ltd., Digital Colony and EQT AB are among investors that have done deals in the sector.Sodzawiczny, who previously founded Zenium Data Centers, will become chief executive officer of GTR, according to Wednesday’s statement. Zenium received backing from billionaire George Soros’s Quantum Strategic Partners Ltd. and was acquired by CyrusOne Inc. in 2018.KKR is committing capital from its third global infrastructure fund to GTR, which will be able to deploy more than $2.5 billion including debt financing towards building new data centers, it said in the statement.There were more than 100 mergers and acquisitions involving data centers announced last year, the highest tally on record, according to Synergy Research Group. Private-equity dealmaking in the industry increased 50%, Synergy data show. Digital Colony and EQT agreed in May last year to take Zayo Group Holdings Inc. private in a deal valuing the fiber network and data center operator at about $8 billion.Infrastructure managers, flush with investor cash, are also looking to capitalize on the trend. Real estate investment trust Digital Realty Trust Inc. agreed last year to buy Interxion Holding NV, which provides data centers and colocation services to electronic traders, for roughly $7 billion.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

More than 200 stocks are likely to move into or out of the key benchmarks in late June. There are proven ways to profit from the shifts.

Reliance Industries Ltd has launched an online grocery service, JioMart, the head of its grocery retail business said, in a move aimed at rivalling Amazon.com's local unit and Walmart Inc's Flipkart in the huge Indian market. JioMart will deliver groceries in more than 200 towns across the country, Damodar Mall, chief executive of grocery retail at the Indian conglomerate, said on Twitter late on Saturday. Reliance launched a small pilot of JioMart deliveries in select areas of the Indian financial capital Mumbai late last month, days after announcing that Facebook Inc would spend $5.7 billion for 9.99 % stake in the company's digital unit, Jio Platforms.

Wall Street ended mixed on Friday in a mostly tame finish to a week of strong gains, as investors gauged China-U.S. tensions and amid ongoing uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery from the coronavirus. President Donald Trump's warning on Thursday that the U.S. would react strongly to China's plan for a national security law in Hong Kong has raised concerns over Washington and Beijing's possibly reneging on their Phase 1 trade deal. Late in the session, stocks edged lower after the U.S. Commerce Department said it was adding 33 Chinese companies and other institutions to an economic blacklist for human rights violations and to address U.S. national security concerns.

KKR, a leading global investment firm, and Franek Sodzawiczny, a leading data center entrepreneur and executive, announced today the formation of Global Technical Realty ("GTR"), a build-to-suit and roll-up acquisition data center platform in Europe.

New York-based KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR) is investing $1.5 billion in Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd.'s digital arm Jio Platforms, the latter announced Thursday.What Happened KKR's investment will translate into a 2.3% stake in Jio, which was launched as a mobile network operator in 2016, and has since come to dominate the market in India. The funding puts an enterprise value of $68.3 billion at the Mumbai-based company."Few companies have the potential to transform a country's digital ecosystem in the way that Jio Platforms is doing in India, and potentially worldwide," the investment firm's Co-Founder and Co-CEO Henry Kravis said in a statement.Why It Matters This is a fifth major investment by a United States-based company in Jio in a month.Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) was the first to announce an investment of $5.7 billion in the company in late April in exchange for a nearly 10% stake.The social media giant's investment was followed by a $748 million funding from Silver Lake, $1.5 billion from Vista Equity Partners, and $871 million from General Atlantic.Jio has been rapidly expanding into other digital sectors beyond telecom and internet service, including in the online news segment, and music and video on-demand streaming.The company has partnered with Facebook subsidiary Whatsapp for its latest venture in e-commerce, as it looks to ruffle some feathers in a market dominated by Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart Inc. subsidiary Flipkart in the country.Price Action KKR shares closed 0.5% lower at $26.55 on Thursday.See more from Benzinga * Global Music Revenue Set To Double By 2030 Despite Pandemic Impact: Goldman Sachs Report * Facebook Plans To Resume Work In Office In July At 25% Capacity And Safety Measures In Place * McDonald's Faces Class Action Over Lack Of Worker Protection Against Coronavirus(C) 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

(Bloomberg) -- Reliance Industries Ltd. has started testing its online grocery shopping portal across India, still under a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the coronavirus.JioMart is now delivering in more than 200 cities, Damodar Mall, the chief executive officer of Reliance Retail’s grocery business said in a tweet. JioMart last month started a pilot project serving users in three neighborhoods surrounding Mumbai.Read here: Ambani Tests WhatsApp-Backed Online Store in Locked-Down IndiaThe soft launch of JioMart takes Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani, also Asia’s richest man, one step closer to taking on Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart in an e-commerce market that KPMG says is likely to grow to $200 billion by 2027.A Reliance spokesperson declined to comment on the JioMart launch.The JioMart shopping app is available via Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp, which in India has about 400 million users. Facebook has said it expects the partnership with JioMart will help make WhatsApp the primary way small businesses connect with customers.New York-based KKR & Co. on Friday became the latest private equity firm to invest in Jio Platforms Ltd., the digital services holding company controlled by Reliance. KKR will pay 113.7 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) for a 2.3% stake in Jio Platforms.Ambani has been selling stakes in Jio Platforms as he tries to bring Reliance’s net debt of more than $20 billion down to zero before March 2021. Reliance wants to shift away from oil and petrochemicals toward faster-growing consumer businesses.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

KKR, a leading global investment firm, and Etche France ("Etche"), announced that KKR has acquired a strategic stake in Etche from Groupe BMF and co-founders. Etche is a private real estate company, founded in 2010 by the late Jean-Pierre Raynal and Léon Baruc, that owns and operates a portfolio of over 120 assets (€400m GAV) across France in the logistics, light industrial and office sectors.

KKR Appoints Nicholas Hyde as Managing Director to lead Client Partner Group in Australia & New Zealand.

The guru joins Carl Icahn in projecting troubles ahead for office properties Continue reading...

Reliance Industries Limited ("Reliance Industries") and Jio Platforms Limited ("Jio Platforms"), India’s leading digital services platform, announced today that KKR will invest ₹ 11,367 crore into Jio Platforms. This transaction values Jio Platforms at an equity value of ₹ 4.91 lakh crore and an enterprise value of ₹ 5.16 lakh crore. This is KKR’s largest investment in Asia and will translate into a 2.32% equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis. Over the last month, leading technology investors, such as, Facebook, Silver Lake, Vista, General Atlantic and KKR have announced aggregate investments of ₹ 78,562 crore into Jio Platforms.

Wall Street was mixed on Friday in a mostly tame finish to a week of strong gains, as investors gauged China-U.S. tensions and amid ongoing uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery from the coronavirus. President Donald Trump's warning on Thursday that the U.S. would react strongly to China's plan for a national security law in Hong Kong has raised concerns over Washington and Beijing's possibly reneging on their Phase 1 trade deal. The rhetoric knocked Wall Street off multi-month highs, although the main indexes were still set to add over 2% for the week, fueled by optimism about an eventual coronavirus vaccine and the easing of virus-related curbs.

(Bloomberg) -- Follow Bloomberg on LINE messenger for all the business news and analysis you need.Southeast Asian online property leader PropertyGuru Pte grew revenue 24% in 2019 thanks to surging regional wealth, a strong performance its chief executive said may be hard to repeat this year.PropertyGuru, the TPG- and KKR-backed real estate startup that pulled the plug on an initial public offering last year, has managed four straight years of sales growth. Chief Executive Officer Hari Krishnan told Bloomberg News Wednesday growth will probably taper off after the coronavirus outbreak triggered lockdowns in all five countries where it operates.“We need to see how bad it gets in May and June before we really know how the whole year is going to play out,” Krishnan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Haslinda Amin and Rishaad Salamat. “In all honesty, it’s going to be hard to continue delivering the group-wide results that we’ve been able to deliver over the last three, four years.”PropertyGuru’s Australian IPO was to have been one of the most-anticipated events of Singapore’s tech scene last year. The 12-year-old company, started by entrepreneurs Steve Melhuish and Jani Rautiainen the same year the iPhone was launched, has become a household name in the property-crazed city-state. Today, it’s the largest real estate marketplace in Southeast Asia with operations in countries including Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand.The startup revealed its financial performance for the first time since a 2019 prospectus. The Singapore-based company’s revenue rose 24% to S$88.4 million ($62.4 million) last year on a pro forma basis. That topped the S$85.6 million the firm had forecast in its prospectus. Operating free cash flow rose to S$14.2 million from S$11.9 million.“We have made forecasts which are in a public domain when we lodged our prospectus and we wanted to complete the picture,” Krishnan said. He said it’s unclear when the firm might attempt to list again, given the economic uncertainty of the pandemic. But the company rolled out new virtual viewing features in March and has taken steps to emerge from the Covid-19 era stronger, he added.Read more: CEO of Singapore’s PropertyGuru Vows a Comeback After IPO FlopPropertyGuru sped up the rollout of the virtual viewing technology by two months to serve customers sheltering at home. The new feature augments its so-called FastKey platform and creates digitized walkthroughs of a project and its units, as well as the surrounding cityscape. That allows potential buyers to view properties online in real time and shortlist them remotely.“I don’t think people and developers will emerge fully soon,” he said. “If you are going to work from home, you are going to also browse from home. For that, you need visualization.”PropertyGuru is 58% owned by TPG Capital LP and KKR & Co. Home sales in Singapore -- where it claims a 75% market share -- fell to their lowest in almost six years in April after a partial lockdown imposed that month brought the market to a standstill. With the lockdown extended until June 1, sales in May are expected to drop even further. The lengthened lockdown also threatens to push prices down further: Home values declined by 1% in the three months ended March 31 after years of consistent growth.(Updates with CEO’s comments in third paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. and an investor group backed by German publisher Axel Springer SE are among suitors that submitted bids for EBay Inc.’s classified-advertising business, according to people familiar with the matter.Axel Springer teamed up with KKR & Co. for its offer, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Online classifieds company Adevinta ASA also made a bid for the unit by this week’s deadline, the people said. A consortium of Blackstone Group Inc., Permira and Hellman & Friedman has also been pursuing the business, the people said.The unit could fetch $8 billion to $10 billion, according to one of the people. EBay could decide as soon as next week which suitors advance to the next round, the people said.EBay shares rose 2.3% in New York Friday, valuing the company at about $30.5 billion.A potential sale of EBay’s classifieds unit could rank among the largest deals in Europe involving private equity firms this year. EBay is seeking a sale of the business at a time when market turmoil has hampered financing for leveraged buyouts, forcing companies to put a number of bidding processes on hold. Walmart Inc. paused the sale of a majority stake in its U.K. grocery chain Asda to focus management’s attention on running the business amid unprecedented spikes in demand driven by the coronavirus.Representatives for EBay, Adevinta, Axel Springer, Blackstone, KKR, Naspers and Permira declined to comment. A spokesperson for Hellman & Friedman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.EBay said in February it was in talks with multiple parties about a sale of the business and expected to update investors by the end of the first half. While the San Jose, California-based company reported better-than-expected sales in the first quarter, the classifieds unit dragged on results as the Covid-19 pandemic forced the closure of car dealerships.EBay’s classified business has attracted interest from several strategic and private equity firms, Dealreporter and The Wall Street Journal have previously reported, citing unidentified people. Permira partially owns Polish online auction site Allegro. Hellman & Friedman is a backer of digital car marketplace Autoscout24 GmbH.E-commerce group Naspers, Africa’s largest company by market value, is seeking to boost its portfolios in classifieds, food delivery and digital-payments businesses as well as education, Chief Executive Officer Bob Van Dijk said in an interview this month. The company acquires online companies around the world through Amsterdam-listed Prosus NV, which the company spun off in September last year.German publisher Axel Springer has ramped up its hunt for deals to accelerate a shift into digital media since agreeing to go private with the help of KKR last year.Norway’s Adevinta was spun off of Scandinavian media conglomerate Schibsted ASA last year with the goal of expanding in the global online classified market.(Updates with details on Axel Springer and Adevinta in last two paragraphs)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

KKR & Co. (KKR) said it will inject $1.5 billion in Reliance Industries’ Jio Platforms Ltd., its biggest investment in Asia.As result of the transaction, which is still subject to regulatory approvals, KKR will own a 2.32% equity stake in Jio Platforms on a fully diluted basis. The deal values Jio Platforms at an equity value of about $65 billion.Jio Platforms is an Indian telecommunications company that operates a national LTE network with coverage across all 22 telecom circles with more than 388 million subscribers.“Few companies have the potential to transform a country’s digital ecosystem in the way that Jio Platforms is doing in India, and potentially worldwide,” said Henry Kravis, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of KKR. “Jio Platforms is a true homegrown next generation technology leader in India that is unmatched in its ability to deliver technology solutions and services to a country that is experiencing a digital revolution.”This marks the 5th investment for Jio over the past month by large corporates, including Silverlake and Facebook (FB), taking the total to over $10 billion.India has been a key strategic market for KKR with a history of investing in the country since 2006. The firm has in recent years invested over $30 billion (total enterprise value) in tech companies, and today its technology portfolio has more than 20 companies across the technology, media and telecom sectors.Shares in KKR have been on a steep recovery path soaring 45% in the past two months and were trading at $26.84 as of Friday's close.Earlier this month, five-star analyst Chris Kotowski at Oppenheimer remained bullish on the stock with a Buy rating and a $34 price target, saying that the private equity firm is a “very compelling investment at 9.0x enterprise value (ex net cash & investments)”.“We think there is significant upside to distributable earnings over time as there is ample room for the real asset and public market platforms to grow, balance sheet investment to be monetized and positive outlook regarding base management fee growth on funds associated with the next-generation flagships and other associated strategies,” Kotowski wrote in a note to investors.Turning now to the rest of the Street, TipRanks data shows that Kotowski's bullish outlook is shared by another 8 analysts who have a Buy rating on the stock, while 2 are sidelined with a Hold rating adding up to a Strong Buy consensus. Despite the recent rally, the $31.73 average price target implies shares still have room to gain 18% in the coming 12 months. (See KKR stock analysis on TipRanks).      Related News: Beleaguered Hertz Sinks 36% In After-Market On Bankruptcy Protection Filing Facebook Invests An Eye-Watering $5.7B in India’s Jio Platforms Nvidia Sinks Despite Stellar Earnings; Top Analyst Says Buy On Any Weakness More recent articles from Smarter Analyst: * HBO Max Launches, But Not Yet Available on Amazon, Roku Platforms * Apple Snaps Up AI Startup Inductiv, As Analysts Boost PTs On Store Reopenings * Microsoft Seeks $2B Stake In India’s Jio Platforms- Report * Boeing Cuts 6,770 Jobs In U.S.; CFRA Upgrades Stock To Buy

U.S. stock indexes moved in a flat-to-low range on Friday as investors gauged Sino-U.S. tensions amid continued uncertainty over the pace of economic recovery from the coronavirus. President Donald Trump's warning on Thursday that the U.S. would react strongly to China's plan for a national security law in Hong Kong raised concerns over Washington and Beijing possibly reneging on their Phase-1 trade deal. The rhetoric knocked Wall Street off multi-month highs, although the main indexes were still set to add between 2.8% and 3.1% for the week on optimism over a vaccine and the easing of virus-related curbs.