JERA, Japan's largest power company, said its global CEO noted European gas inventories are low and the situation in the Strait of Hormuz may persist.

The Shanghai Financial Regulatory Bureau issued guidance to boost tech-driven efficiency in the banking and insurance sectors, urging use of digital intelligence to enhance financial services. It encourages eligible financial institutions to build enterprise-level AI platforms and to integrate big data, blockchain, IoT and quantum computing across product R&D, business decision-making and risk management to raise digital-operational capabilities. The bureau supports shifting tech-enterprise evaluation from primarily financial metrics to technology-innovation capability, leveraging tech-finance databases and the HuKe scoring system to build a dedicated tech-finance evaluation framework, profile tech talent and firms, and accelerate tailored tech-finance product development. The guidance also mandates stronger secure AI practices, tighter data and network security, and reinforced data, model and algorithm risk management to protect financial consumers’ data privacy.

Chinese stocks opened lower: Shanghai Composite down 0.54%, Shenzhen Composite down 1.03%, ChiNext down 1.29%. Grain, lithography equipment and crude palm oil sectors led losses.