JAPAN
Minister pans BOJ’s clarity
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) should communicate its inflation goal more clearly, Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Motohisa Furukawa said. “It’s desirable for the BOJ to consider whether there’s a better way for the public to understand its inflation policy,” Furukawa said on NHK’s Sunday Debate program yesterday. The nation’s central bank has avoided setting an explicit inflation goal. Some lawmakers have pushed to revise the country’s law to force the central bank to adopt an inflation target to help conquer more than a decade of falling prices. The BOJ will review whether to begin referring to its so-called price stability understanding as a target during a meeting that begins today, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
STOCK MARKETS
Shares hit Chinese markets
An added 16.09 billion yuan (US$2.56 billion) of shares in 22 companies will be available for trading today on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges after lockup periods expired, according to Xinhua news agency. Newly tradeable shares in Southwest Securities Co (西南證券), China Shipbuilding Industry Co (中國船舶重工) and Jiangsu-based jean-fabric maker Black Peony Group Co (黑牡丹集團) account for more than 12 billion yuan of the total, based on Friday closing prices, Xinhua said, citing the stock exchanges. The value of shares freed from lockup periods more than tripled from the previous week, according to the report.
AVIATION
Airlines call for UN’s help
Global airlines yesterday called for a deal brokered by a UN agency to avoid an impasse between China and the EU over jet pollution spilling into a trade war. China’s decision to order its airlines not to join an EU carbon trading scheme and the EU’s refusal so far to back down on its plans, have wedged airlines between conflicting laws, Tony Tyler, the head of the International Air Transport Association, said in an interview. He also said airlines faced a tough year this year and warned of further airline bankruptcies in Europe or elsewhere if the region failed to resolve its sovereign debt crisis.
BANKING
Swiss bank skips court date
The US Department of Justice called Switzerland’s largest private bank a fugitive from justice after it did not send any representatives to a court hearing in New York, where it has been charged with conspiring with US clients to hide US$1.2 billion from the US Internal Revenue Service. Wegelin & Co is said to have helped at least 100 US clients conceal huge sums of money from the US tax agency in overseas accounts. Federal prosecutors said the bank recruited US customers who were concerned about possible prosecution for tax violations at home, including some that had already pulled money out of other Swiss banks.
BANKING
UK bankers arrested
An unspecified number of employees at unidentified UK banks are among a “number” of people arrested as part of an investigation into “tax-related criminal offenses,” the country’s customs and revenue service said. “As a result of an ongoing investigation into tax-related criminal offenses,” the service “has arrested a number of people, some of whom work for UK banks,” a spokesperson said by telephone. “This investigation relates to the actions of the people arrested in relation to their own financial affairs and is not connected to the business activities of the banks.”
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