China is planning to hire foreign executives for its big state banks and invite in foreign investment in a sweeping overhaul of an industry struggling with chronic bad debts, the Financial Times reported yesterday.
Liu Mingkang (劉明康), chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said in an interview that the commission wants to turn around China's biggest banks -- several of which are technically insolvent -- within three to five years, the London-based newspaper said.
China set up the banking commission in March as a Cabinet-level watchdog for an industry struggling to adapt to market demands after decades of functioning as cash suppliers to inefficient state industries.
Beijing is under pressure to clean up its banks as it prepares to open the market to foreign competitors under commitments made to the WTO.
Last week, the commission gathered top international finance experts to solicit advice on its blueprint for banking reform. They included a former governor of the Bank of England, a former head of the New York Federal Reserve and a former general manager of the Bank of International Settlements.
Liu was quoted by the Financial Times as saying he would like to see foreign executives hired for key positions in state banks -- an unprecedented move.
Beijing also plans to inject capital into the big state banks and then have them sell shares on foreign stock markets, the newspaper quoted Vice Minister of Finance Lou Jiwei (
Official statistics put the amount of non-performing loans in the "big four" state banks -- China Construction Bank, Bank of China, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and the Agricultural Bank of China -- at about 2 trillion yuan (US$250 billion), or about 23 percent of total assets. Some foreign experts put the figure at about twice that amount.
Liu said the main priority was to ensure that banks do not backslide once they have cut back on bad loans. He noted that a major challenge in regulating the banks was their vast size and vertical structure, which enables branch managers to hide irregular activities from their bosses in head offices.
"You can see a lot of time bombs binding together to become an atom bomb," he was quoted as saying.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day