Barclays PLC and JPMorgan Chase & Co’s South Korea units broke local banking rules by selling inappropriate currency derivatives, South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service said.
The regulator sent an institutional warning to Barclays and cautioned an individual at JPMorgan after regular examinations, it said in an e-mailed statement.
Barclays sold currency derivatives to three exporters that harmed the companies last year, the regulator said. JPMorgan sold derivatives in 2007 that crimped the ability of six companies to effectively hedge against currency volatility, it said.
“Korean regulators are going way back to before the crisis to penalize the banks,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “The question is, were they too aggressive, were they trying to protect the local companies from a loss on the derivatives exposure that was willingly taken by them, or did the banks break some obvious rules?”
Bellerina Yeo, a spokeswoman for Barclays in Singapore, said in an e-mail that the company is unable to comment. Kang So-young, the South Korea spokeswoman for New York-based JPMorgan, declined to comment.
Nations from China to South Africa are striving to limit currency volatility as near-zero borrowing costs in advanced economies spur demand for higher-yielding assets in emerging-markets.
Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo said yesterday the nation needs to use “macro-prudential” measures to reduce the volatility of the won because sharp fluctuations are an obstacle to financial-market stability.
South Korean regulators began an audit of how banks handle foreign-currency derivatives on Oct. 19 to tackle speculation. Financial Supervisory Service Governor Kim Jong-chang said last month the country may tighten curbs on bank trades of the derivatives and penalize institutions acting improperly.
The National Assembly is also moving closer to reviving taxes on foreign investors’ bond holdings. The parliament’s finance committee on Dec. 7 supported a bill that would tax interest income from treasury and central bank bonds by as much as 14 percent and put a 20 percent levy on capital gains from their sale.
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