HONG KONG
‘Wise’ to trade in yuan
The currency system cannot realistically serve as a conduit between China and the rest of the world, former Monetary Authority chief executive Joseph Yam (任志剛) said yesterday. The territory’s status as a global financial center makes its economy especially vulnerable to volatile fund flows — a dilemma that will only deepen as China relaxes its capital controls, Yam wrote in a blog post. It might be wise to let local stocks be priced and traded in the yuan as well, he said.
MONGOLIA
IMF to delay bailout funds
The IMF is to delay disbursing bailout funds after its prime minister and Cabinet were toppled in a parliamentary no-confidence vote last week, the fund said yesterday. The cash-strapped and debt-ridden nation was granted a US$5.5 billion rescue package from the IMF and other partners in May. The IMF office in Mongolia said a review of the bailout package would be held after a new administration is formed.
RETAIL
Hermes posts record profits
Luxury goods maker Hermes yesterday said that good sales momentum across all of its divisions and in all regions helped it achieve a record profitability in the first six months. Growth in leather goods and saddlery was “sustained” and the perfumes division also booked an increase in sales, the company said. Overall, group revenue rose by 11 percent to 2.713 billion euros (US$3.23 billion) in the period from January to June, while operating profit was up 13 percent at 931 million euros and net profit climbed by 11 percent to 605 million euros.
UNITED STATES
Deficit higher than year ago
The federal government recorded a slightly larger deficit last month than a year ago, while the deficit through the first 11 months of this budget year is well above the same period last year. The Department of the Treasury said that last month’s deficit totaled US$107.7 billion, up 0.5 percent from a deficit of US$107.1 billion a year ago. With one month to go in this budget year, the deficit totals US$673.7 billion, 8.8 percent above the deficit for the same period a year ago, it said.
INDIA
Larger oil area for auction
The nation is to offer larger areas with higher oil and natural gas reserves in the next auction of discovered fields later this year as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government seeks to curtail rising crude oil imports. “The next round would be meatier, bigger and players can expect even better fields,” said Atanu Chakraborty, head of oil regulator Directorate-General of Hydrocarbons. It last year offered 67 small oil and gas fields holding about 625 million barrels of reserves in its first auction in six years.
INSURANCE
Storms to take toll on profits
Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, said that storms led by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma will probably wipe out third-quarter profits and threaten the company’s ability to meet its full-year earnings target. “These two events are expected to result in high insured losses, which the market and Munich Re are unable to quantify at the moment,” the company said on Wednesday in a statement. It had previously given guidance of this year’s profit of 2 billion euros to 2.4 billion euros.
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