Manulife Financial Corp said that Mark O’Dell, who quit as the Singapore general manager of American International Group Inc’s (AIA) life insurance unit last week, has joined as the head of its Taiwan operations.
O’Dell will probably start work at Manulife at the end of next month, Emil Lee (李漢雄), acting head of Manulife (International) Ltd in Taipei, said by telephone. O’Dell, who has been with American International Assurance Co Singapore for more than 14 years, left the company on Thursday last week.
O’Dell’s departure came during a week when customers crowded the headquarters of AIA Singapore to terminate their policies after AIG agreed to turn over control to the US government last week in exchange for a federal loan of as much as US$85 billion.
The Globe and Mail reported yesterday that the Canadian insurer is considering a bid for the Asian operations of AIG, citing people familiar with the matter.
Manulife chief executive officer Dominic D’Alessandro and his successor Don Guloien have met with investment bankers and financial advisers in the past week to look at an offer for parts of AIG, the Globe and Mail reported the sources as saying.
The Toronto-based insurer is most likely to bid for AIG’s Asian operations, the newspaper said.
Manulife, the second-largest life insurer in North America by market value, last month agreed to buy Taiwan’s Fuhwa Securities Investment Trust Co (復華投信) from Yuanta Financial Holdings Co (元大金控).
Manulife didn’t say how much it paid for the asset manager.
The acquisition, likely to be completed in the fourth quarter, will add seven new retail funds to Manulife’s portfolio in Taiwan and about US$1.3 billion in assets under management.
Manulife was the first Canadian insurance company to enter Taiwan, in 1992, and employs more than 200 people and has about 1,500 agents.
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