May, 2018

• 19 May

  Wearable tech to drive Asia growth

  

  Bloomberg The technology boom powering Asia’s economies is about to get a reboot. Explosive growth in new-era gadgets such as wearable devices and internet-linked home appliances is tipped to offset cooling sales of smartphones, which has already dinged Asia’s tech manufacturers. “Where demand may be softening in some areas it will be strengthening in others,” Koshy Mathai, a senior official ...

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• 19 May

  China’s iQiyi website explores social video

  

  Bloomberg China’s biggest Netflix-like streaming site finally has a plan to get into the rapidly expanding arena of social and user-generated short-form videos. But iQiyi Inc. reckons it’ll take as long as three years to get there. The Baidu Inc. spinoff had long recognised the potential but chosen to focus on its core business out of necessity, iQiyi Chief Executive ...

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• 19 May

  Japanese AI startup aims to teach factory robots to think

  

  Bloomberg Japan’s Preferred Networks Inc. has only one publicly available product, a whimsical application that uses artificial intelligence to automate the coloring of manga cartoons. Yet the four-year-old firm has become Japan’s most valuable startup, with a venture capital funding that priced it at more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Toyota Motor Corp., its biggest ...

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• 19 May

  BMW bets on self-driving iNext halo in luxury sales race

  

  Bloomberg BMW AG offered another glimpse of its futuristic self-driving iNext car as the German manufacturer seeks to gain momentum in the race to overtake rival Mercedes-Benz in luxury car sales. The company, showing the iNext in a copper-colored version for the first time in 2016, will offer a more concrete concept of the vehicle this year, Chief Executive Officer ...

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• 19 May

  SoftBank-backed firm’s game released to public

  Bloomberg The first video-game built using technology developed by Improbable Worlds Ltd., the virtual reality startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp., has been released by British developer Bossa Studios. Worlds Adrift uses Improbable’s SpatialOS software, which lets programmers create realistic simulations of massive scale and complexity and run across a cloud-computing network. Softbank acquired a non-controlling stake in London-based Improbable ...

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• 19 May

  Emerging markets under pressure to hike rates

  

  Bloomberg Emerging-market central banks are going on the defensive. A surging dollar and the highest 10-year US Treasury yields since 2011 are fuelling bets that policy makers in key developing nations from India to Mexico will raise interest rates faster than economists previously anticipated. The turnaround is led by concern that a failure to tighten monetary policy risks the possibility ...

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• 19 May

  BOE seen raising rates at least once this year

  

  Bloomberg Slower-than-expected UK growth this year won’t stop the Bank of England from at least one interest-rate increase, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Output will stutter to 1.4 percent from 1.8 percent in 2017, the median forecast showed, slightly lower than the 1.5 percent previously forecast. Nearly 60 percent of economists see a hike at the August meeting. ...

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• 19 May

  Bank of Spain downgrades report on income inequality

  

  Bloomberg The Bank of Spain is debating how to handle an in-house study of wealth and income disparities which risks landing the institution in the middle of a political storm, according to two people familiar with the matter. Rather than publish the analysis in its signature annual report, which carries the stamp of the governor and sets out the official ...

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• 19 May

  JPMorgan brings alternative investments to masses

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to offer sophisticated investments to a much broader clientele. The bank is slashing requirements to participate in certain alternative investments that its asset management arm once offered mainly to institutions or the ultra rich. That will allow it to accommodate more allocations made through registered investment advisers. The new minimum buy-in will be $100,000, ...

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• 19 May

  Deutsche Bank gets Fed scolding that burdens CEO Sewing

  

  Bloomberg A tense scene unfolded inside Deutsche Bank AG’s Manhattan tower just hours before news began leaking that the firm was looking for a new chief executive officer. US regulators on that day in late March gave senior executives a stern warning that remains in effect: Europe’s biggest investment bank, they said, must act more urgently to fix lapses described ...

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