SOUTH KOREA
Banks are safe: regulator
Repayment calls from Europe probably will not cause a currency-exchange crunch among the country’s banks because the lenders already have secured enough foreign-asset liquidity, the Financial Supervisory Service said. Foreign-currency cash liquidity at local banks gained fivefold at the end of October compared with the level at the end of June, the regulator said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Borrowing, including loans and bonds from European countries, totaled US$43.6 billion at the end of October, accounting for 34 percent of overseas borrowing, it said. That compares with US$42 billion at the end of June, when Europe accounted for 36 percent of overseas borrowing, it said.
TELECOMS
Huawei limits Iranian links
China’s largest maker of telecommunications equipment said it was voluntarily limiting its business activity in Iran because of the “increasingly complex situation” there. Huawei Technologies Ltd (華為) said it was no longer seeking new customers and was limiting its business with existing customers. It said in a statement on its Web site that it would continue to provide necessary services relating to communication networks that are under delivery or have already been delivered. The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Huawei’s business grew in Iran following a pullback by Western companies after the government’s bloody crackdown on demonstrators in 2009.
SOFTWARE
SAP expects cloud windfall
The acquisition of US firm Success Factors by SAP will make the German software giant No. 1 in “cloud computing” and show a profit from 2013, Jim Hagemann Snabe, one of SAP’s two co--executives, said in an interview with the financial weekly Focus on Saturday. SAP, the world’s leader in professional software, announced last week that it would acquire Success Factors for US$3.4 billion. Success Factors specializes in cloud computing, which involves managing on the Internet data that is stored on distant servers. It eliminates the need for clients to keep data on their own computers or servers.
TECHNOLOGY
Lenovo switching to Japan
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) is considering switching some of its personal computer manufacturing operations to Japan from China and other places, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Saturday, citing Lenovo senior vice president Milko Van Duijl. Lenovo has a venture with Japan’s NEC Corp and is already making some products at a plant in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, the report said. The company may make all Lenovo-brand products for the Japanese market at the Yamagata plant, the report said.
EUROZONE
Pope extols transparency
Pope Benedict XVI said on Saturday that in the business world, transparency and the search for profit were compatible, speaking at a time when Italy and the eurozone faces deep financial woes. “In the field of economics and finance, fair intentions, transparency and the search for good results are consistent and should never be separated,” the pontiff said in the Vatican. “The economy and the market should never be separated from solidarity.” He was speaking as 3,000 representatives of Italian cooperative associations attended a mass at St Peter’s Basilica, 120 years since the encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed the condition of the working class, was issued.
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