REAL ESTATE
Australia mulls mortgages
Australia could further curb mortgage lending to investors as the effects of earlier measures wane and Sydney and Melbourne house prices keep surging, Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor Michele Bullock said. “There is no doubt that the actions did address some of the risks,” Bullock said in a Bloomberg Address in Sydney. “While the resilience of both borrowers and lenders has no doubt improved, the initial effects on credit and some other indicators we use to assess risk may fade over time. We are continuing to monitor their ongoing effects and are prepared to do more if needed.” Bullock said that while individual decisions by banks might appear reasonable, regulators’ concern is that together they could lower overall lending standards. The backdrop is one where Sydney house prices have rocketed 105 percent since the start of 2009 and Melbourne’s have also soared.
REAL ESTATE
Investment funds fall
The amount of money available for property investment globally has fallen on an annual basis for the first time since 2011, led by Europe, as the amount of debt on offer diminishes, a report published yesterday by broker Cushman & Wakefield Inc said. Lenders are prepared to offer less credit than before, particularly on riskier properties, the report said. A total of US$435 billion of newly raised equity and debt is available to invest in commercial real estate, 2 percent less than a year ago, Cushman said. For the first time the equity targeting real-estate investments in the Americas exceeded Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as a result of the US dollar’s strength, the report said. Investors had consistently allocated more money to real estate since emerging from the global financial crisis as low interest rates diminished returns from government and corporate debt. Rising US interest rates and political uncertainty have now stemmed that tide.
FUEL STATIONS
Glencore linked to Mexico
Glencore PLC is entering the fuel-stations business in Mexico with a 15-year supply deal and a US$200 million investment in a joint venture with local owners, people familiar with the decision said. The agreement is the first significant move for Glencore in the retail fuel sector. Glencore is to supply 180,000 barrels of gasoline and diesel per day to 1,400 stations, about 10 percent of the country’s total, the people said, asking not to be named because the deal has not been announced. The move came after Mexico ended a long-standing monopoly by its state-controlled energy company and last month boosted gasoline prices to aid distributors.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook cuts tracking data
Facebook Inc on Monday barred software developers from using the massive social network’s data to create surveillance tools, closing off a process that had been exploited by US police departments to track protesters. Facebook, its Instagram unit and rival Twitter Inc came under fire last year from privacy advocates after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a report that police were using location data and other user information to spy on protesters in places such as Ferguson, Missouri. In response to the ACLU report, the companies shut off the data access of Geofeedia, a Chicago-based data vendor that said it works with organizations to “leverage social media,” but Facebook policy had not explicitly barred such use of data in the future.
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