Societe Generale SA plans to expand its Asia fixed-income team by more than 10 percent next year as hedge funds, insurers and central banks diversify from developed markets, said Robert Reilly, co-head of the division.
France’s second-largest bank by market value will have increased the team by more than 50 percent to 70 this year, said Reilly, who moved to Hong Kong from Sydney in January to oversee the expansion, in an interview on Friday. The team will boost its research staff to seven from four, based in Hong Kong and Tokyo, in the coming months. He declined to give more specific figures on the expansion.
“We’ve seen a marked growth of inquiry and transactions in Asian rates from clients who used to just sit with developed-market products,” he said. “It’s a diversification play. As the share of the world’s gross domestic product in Asia is increasing, funds need to be more focused and turned on to Asia.”
“Our recommendation is to be long Asian currencies against the euro,” he said. “There is so much pressure on the US to strengthen their currency that the euro is going to weaken on the back of that. Such a strong euro is going to hamper economic recovery across Europe.”
Long positions are bets that a currency will rise.
Asian central banks may be more willing to tolerate appreciation in their currencies against the euro because they have been focusing on stabilizing the dollar exchange rate to protect exports, Reilly said. Societe Generale recommended on Oct. 28 that investors buy the Korean won against the euro, predicting an 11 percent advance in the Asian currency.
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