HONG KONG -- ESR Cayman is poised to become the world's third-largest listed real estate manager after agreeing to buy rival ARA Asset Management for $5.2 billion.

Hong Kong-listed ESR will buy its Singapore-based peer by issuing $4.29 billion worth of new shares at 27 Hong Kong dollars ($3.47) apiece, a 2.5% discount compared to the close on Wednesday, plus $519 million in cash from its own funds

JAKARTA -- Indonesia's economy grew for the first time in five quarters in the April-June period, recording its strongest expansion in at least a decade.

Indonesia's real gross domestic product rose 7.07% in the second quarter from a year earlier, data from the country's statistics agency showed Thursday, faster than the median forecast of 6.57% of 22 analysts polled by Reuters. The expansion was given a leg up from a low base effect, with GDP having

TOKYO -- The Tokyo Olympics are well underway after a long journey filled with controversy, and an unprecedented one-year postponement because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proceedings officially began with the opening ceremony at the National Stadium , a mostly subdued affair mixed with joyous moments like a high-tech drone show, and capped by tennis star Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic cauldron.

We're tracking the latest medal count .

Read our breakdown of the events to watch .

Here are the latest developments:

Thursday,

TOKYO -- Lawmakers from Japan's ruling party on Wednesday called on the government to reverse a new policy limiting COVID hospitalizations to all but severely ill patients.

Arguing that only "hospitals in Tokyo are in a crisis situation" due to surging infections, Toshiharu Furukawa, head of the Liberal Democratic Party's vaccine task force, said the policy should not be applied uniformly nationwide.

"We as a party decided not to accept this," he told reporters after a meeting of LDP committees dealing with the pandemic.

Boonsithi Chokwatana is the Chairman of Saha Group, Thailand's leading consumer products conglomerate. This is part 14 of a 30-part series.

Advertising has played a major role in the growth of Saha Group. In 1964, when we were desperately trying to grow the sales of toothpaste and powdered shampoo through our partnership with Japanese consumer products maker Lion, my father had the idea to establish Far East Advertising, Thailand's first advertising agency.

My father realized the importance of advertising early on

SINGAPORE -- A flurry of stock market debuts by Asian companies has arrived, making this year a transformational moment for startups from India and Southeast Asia.

Crackdowns on Chinese startups are likely to make global investors look elsewhere and bolster the share prices of other companies in the region. But this coming-of-age moment is still missing a crucial ingredient: monetization.

India's Zomato, which last month went public and saw its share jump as much as 80% when it began trading in Mumbai, is still

TOKYO -- Since the Age of Discovery, humans have explored the world's sea routes, but there is still one of the "Seven Seas" that has yet to be conquered: the Arctic Ocean.

The Northern Sea Route that passes through these waters is normally blocked by ice for much of the year, but global warming is making the passage increasingly navigable. As the shortest shipping route between East Asia and Europe, it has the potential to rewrite the world's logistics networks. The Arctic is also rich

TOKYO -- The Tokyo Olympics are well underway after a long journey filled with controversy, and an unprecedented one-year postponement because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proceedings officially began with the opening ceremony at the National Stadium , a mostly subdued affair mixed with joyous moments like a high-tech drone show, and capped by tennis star Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic cauldron.

We're tracking the latest medal count .

Read our breakdown of the events to watch .

Here are the latest developments:

Thursday,

TOKYO -- Toyota Motor on Wednesday reported a net profit of 897.8 billion yen ($8.2 billion) for the April-June period, a record amount for the quarter, thanks to robust sales in North America and China that reached pre-pandemic levels.

The automaker, however, kept its net profit forecast for the year through March 2022 at 2.3 trillion yen as it anticipates rising raw material costs and other headwinds.

Honda Motor on the same day upwardly revised