DBS Taiwan said yesterday it plans to launch a range of offshore yuan-denominated businesses to meet rising demand as Taiwanese companies work to expand their cross-strait business, but find themselves facing financing problems.
“Offshore yuan business is a mega trend that will change the [industry’s] landscape ... Players that ignore that trend could see their ranking fall,” DBS general manager and head of DBS Taiwan Jerry Chen (陳亮丞) told a media briefing.
The bank’s offshore banking unit will offer a wide range of products and services including deposits, remittances, letters of credit services and financing, term loan financing as well as foreign exchange and derivatives to meet rising demand for solutions denominated in yuan, Chen said.
DBS Taiwan is looking to leverage its understanding of small and medium-sized enterprises — a segment in which the bank aims to offer expert foreign exchange and cash management services to meet rising cross-strait needs, Chen said.
The yuan is gaining importance and DBS has detected significant interest from Taiwanese clients who would like to have easier access to the currency, Chen said.
DBS Taiwan, which is scheduled to be upgraded into a subsidiary early next year, will roll out more yuan-denominated services soon, Chen said.
The bank is already a leader in the offshore yuan business in Singapore and Hong Kong, he added.
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