Two of Canada's most international financial institutions have received regulatory approval to add branches in China, as the country opens its financial-services market to foreign competitors.
Bank of Nova Scotia, also known as Scotiabank, said on Friday that the China Banking Regulatory Commission has agreed to let the Canadian bank upgrade its Shanghai office into a full branch.
The branch will be the hub for Scotiabank foreign exchange and treasury services in China, as well as offering loans and deposit-taking services to Chinese and international companies, with a focus on trade finance.
Scotiabank, which has been operating in China for over 20 years, claims the largest Canadian bank network in the country, with branches in Guangzhou and Chongqing and representative offices in Beijing and Shanghai.
Also Friday, Manulife-Sinochem Life Insurance Co., a subsidiary of Toronto-based Manulife Financial, said it had received approval for a branch in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province.
China's business landscape has changed since Manulife began getting Chinese licenses in 1996, spokesman Peter Fuchs said.
"In the last couple of years, the licenses have been coming much more frequently and I think that speaks to the difference in regulation with [the China Insurance Regulatory Commission] and the government," he said.
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],”
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
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