BANKING
China to have ‘veto’: report
China will ultimately have “veto power” over major decisions of the new Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The Journal quoted people close to the bank as saying its voting structure will give China the “upper hand” as the largest shareholder, effectively granting it veto power. According to the bank’s articles of incorporation, China is providing nearly US$30 billion of the institution’s US$100 billion capital base, giving Beijing from 25 to 30 percent of total votes, it said. The AIIB, which is to be based in the Chinese capital, has 57 prospective members.
CHINA
CPI decreased last month
Consumer inflation in the nation fell to 1.2 percent last month, authorities said yesterday, as downward pressure on prices intensifies in the world’s second-largest economy. The reading for the consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, released by the National Bureau of Statistics was lower than April’s 1.5 percent. The producer price index — a measure of costs for goods at the factory gate and a leading indicator of the trend for CPI — declined 4.6 percent last month, the bureau said, the same as in April and the 39th consecutive fall.
CYBERCRIME
IiNet issues warning
Australian Internet provider iiNet Ltd has urged more than 30,000 subscribers to change their passwords after claims emerged online that hackers had been attempting to sell personal information stolen from one of the firm’s databases. News of the potential data breach at Australia’s third-largest Web provider first emerged on Twitter, where it was alleged that an unnamed hacker was offering to sell a database that included clients’ passwords, home addresses and telephone numbers. IiNet said it was not immediately able to confirm whether the information, which includes subscriber details from a company it purchased in 2008, had actually been breached.
BANKING
UBS plans assets transfer
UBS Group AG plans to transfer assets and operations into a new Swiss unit on Sunday to meet regulatory demands to make the company easier to break up in a crisis. UBS Switzerland AG is to house the bank’s retail, corporate and wealth management businesses booked in the country, Zurich-based UBS said in a statement yesterday. The transfer date might be deferred, UBS said. The establishment of the Swiss unit is part of wider changes in the bank’s legal structure designed to prevent UBS from needing another bailout. UBS has said that the Swiss unit will have about 300 billion Swiss francs (US$324 billion) in assets and will have joint liability for about SF310 billion of obligations of UBS AG.
AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai, Kia to reduce costs
Hyundai Motor Co and affiliate Kia Motors Corp are reducing costs after sales and profits fell at the two South Korean companies. Hyundai and Kia are “making efforts to cut costs” after first-quarter operating profit declined, the firms said in a joint e-mail yesterday. They did not provide specifics on the cost cuts or any estimate. Operating profit at both Hyundai and Kia declined for a fourth consecutive quarter in the three months ended March 31. They have posted declining vehicle sales due to unfavorable currency-exchange rates.
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],”
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
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