CURRENCY
Seoul, Beijing extend deal
South Korea and China have agreed to extend their currency swap deal, Seoul said yesterday, easing concerns that the deal would fall through due to tensions over a US missile defense system. Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank, and its finance ministry said in a joint statement that the two Asian countries renewed the deal worth 64 trillion won or 360 billion yuan (US$55 billion) for another three years. Currency swap deals allow countries to borrow money from other countries in their own currency, useful especially at a time of financial turmoil.
TRANSPORTATION
Virgin backs Hyperloop One
British billionaire Richard Branson on Thursday placed another bet on the future with an investment in Hyperloop One, which is developing super-high-speed transportation systems. Hyperloop One said Branson’s Virgin Group Ltd would take the company global and rebrand itself as Virgin Hyperloop One in the near future. Branson has joined the board of Hyperloop One, which is to develop pods that would transport passenger and mixed-use cargo at speeds of 402km per hour. The pod lifts above a track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to low aerodynamic drag.
BANKING
HSBC chooses new CEO
British banking giant HSBC Holdings PLC on Thursday said it had chosen John Flint, its head of retail banking and wealth management, to succeed Stuart Gulliver as chief executive, who is retiring. Flint begins his new role on Feb. 21 after Gulliver had already announced his intention to step down after more than seven years, during which time he has overseen a huge reduction in staff numbers and operations amid a troubled period for the bank and sector as a whole. Flint joined HSBC in 1989 and spent the first 14 years with the bank working in Asia. HSBC employs more than 230,000 staff worldwide.
FINANCE
BNP to expand in Asia
BNP Paribas SA plans to significantly increase the number of client advisers employed by its Asian wealth-management business, seeing an opportunity in the retreat of some European rivals from the region. BNP has been investing and hiring in Asia for several years and intends to continue its push, said Vincent Lecomte, co-head of the French bank’s wealth-management business. “The best way for us to grow is to attract new clients as well as new teams,” Lecomte said in an interview in Paris. He said the bank intends to recruit a few dozen relationship managers by 2020.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla recalls Model X’s
Tesla Inc on Thursday said that it is recalling Model X sport utility vehicles to fix second-row seat-backs which might shift forward during crashes. Internal testing revealed that cables in second-row fold-flat seats in last year’s and this year’s models might need to be adjusted to “ensure the safety” of those riding inside, a Tesla spokesperson said in an e-mail on Thursday. “We just ask that you temporarily avoid having two adults sit in the second row left and center seating positions at the same time.” The number of Model X vehicles being recalled was estimated at 11,000, with only a small percentage expected to have the seat cable problem. While Tesla cars have been met with high demand and glowing safety reviews, the firm has struggled to crank models off the assembly line.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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