Several of the biggest fund managers based in London are drawing up plans to move trillions of British pounds in assets and thousands of jobs outside of Britain if the country votes to leave the EU in a referendum due by the end of 2017, the Sunday Times said.
British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives won an unexpected majority in polls last month and are now seeking to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the 28-member bloc ahead of a plebiscite.
Cameron has toured major European capitals to drum up support for reforms, but is facing an increasing strong Euroskeptic voice from within his own center-right party at home.
The Sunday Times said that several major funds had said on condition of anonymity that they had set up committees to prepare for a possible move, with Luxembourg being one possible destination to which they could relocate.
The newspaper said it had spoken to fund managers who believed they could be forced to leave due to EU regulations that allow the sale of investment products only within the bloc when the European headquarters are based in a member state.
On Friday, the only major ratings agency still to give Britain a top-notch credit rating said it risked a downgrade due to the government’s decision to hold a referendum over EU membership.
However, a senior executive with global investment firm Pacific Investment Management Co said earlier last week that the chance of a “Brexit” was very low and uncertainty over the referendum outcome was not likely to affect business investment.
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