Taipei’s competitiveness as a financial center ranks 24th worldwide, up 17 notches from its ranking six months ago, the latest Global Financial Centers Index (GFCI) published on Tuesday shows.
Significant improvement was also seen among other Asian centers, which took five of the top 10 spots in the ranking, the report shows.
The index, launched in March 2007 by the UK-based Z/Yen Group for the City of London, is updated every six months.
This month’s edition provides ratings for 75 financial centers around the world, with 13 new entrants.
The ratings are calculated based on assessments of the financial centers in a continuously running online questionnaire and on 57 instrumental factors grouped under four categories: people, business environment, infrastructure and general competitiveness.
A total of 36,497 assessments from 1,802 financial services professionals are used to compute the latest index.
The report reveals that 59 of the centers rated have received higher scores than six months ago, demonstrating a return of confidence after the global financial crisis.
London remains the world’s most competitive financial center, followed by New York, the report said. Rounding out the top 10 are Hong Kong, Singapore, Shenzhen, Zurich, Tokyo, Chicago, Geneva and Shanghai.
Beijing’s ranking is up 29 places to 22nd, and Seoul is up 18 positions to rank 35th, the report said.
It notes that Asian centers have shown marked improvement since the previous ratings, reflecting the fact that they have been less affected by the recent crisis than many European and North American centers.
Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen were named among centers “likely to become more significant,” it said.
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation said the speed and size of the surge of Asian centers is “a surprise” that deserves further research.
“An in-depth study of Chinese centers, in particular, is needed to see what factors are driving this perceived trend,” 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