H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (15 May 2019) – The Spectacular Implosion of Dr. Cho’s ‘Nefarious Network’: Hong Kong’s markets are plagued by stock manipulation, share pledging, cross-ownership and margin lending. Regulators say they’re going to take action.

May 15, 2019 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (15 May 2019) – The Spectacular Implosion of Dr. Cho’s ‘Nefarious Network’: Hong Kong’s markets are plagued by stock manipulation, share pledging, cross-ownership and margin lending. Regulators say they’re going to take action.

Companies

  • Ctrip CEO says trade war is putting Chinese tourists off US, with many opting for ‘more welcoming’ nations (SCMP)
  • Cloud provider Xunlei discards dubious past, reveals partnership with Youku (TN)
  • Yunji raises $121 million in IPO-but is the company a pyramid scheme? (TN)
  • Bilibili Stock Tumbled Despite the Chinese Anime Site’s 1st-Quarter Revenue Growth (Barron’s)
  • Trend Micro Delivers the Industry’s Most Complete Security Across Cloud and Container Workloads (SB)
  • Toei Releases Impressive Dragon Ball Profits for 2019’s First Quarter (CB); ‘Dragon Ball’ anime powers Toei back to profit growth; Mobile game based on franchise also contributes to turnaround (Nikkei); Bandai Namco sales and profits up last year, led by gaming segment (GI)
  • SK Innovation to invest US$490 million to build a second assembly in China to supply batteries for electric vehicles (SCMP)
  • Key Apple suppliers suffer big profit drop as iPhone woes bite; Foxconn and Pegatron see major drop as tariff challenge looms (Nikkei)
  • Quanta warns shifting out of China may be ‘no cheaper’ than tariffs (Nikkei)
  • Investment platform operators such as Netwealth and HUB24 stand to reap a share in $35 billion in new fund flow as a direct result of the opposition’s plan to abolish franking credit refunds. (AFR)
  • Global investors eye ASX tech darlings as investors, rattled by trade war concerns, get out of the major US technology names (AFR)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Samsung, Softbank

  • Baidu’s education business shifts from consumer-facing to enterprise (TN)
  • After Jack: Alibaba searches for new growth in the post-Ma era; Challenge to Amazon and Microsoft in cloud services could bring conflict with Washington (Nikkei); When the guru steps down: tech companies face the succession question; Jack Ma has been gradually handing power to Daniel Zhang for years (Nikkei)
  • Alipay extends mobile payment services to 300,000 retailers in Japan; The number of merchants supporting Alipay in Japan has surged to more than 300,000 from about 50,000 in early 2018 (SCMP)
  • Tencent Music Stock Gets It Right the Second Time (MF)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

  • Facebook Takes Step to Police Content on Its Live Service (NYT)
  • Apple’s newest iPhone game-only the second the company has ever developed for its own App Store-appears to be targeted at a very small and specific demographic: Omaha-area billionaires aged 85 and up. (qz)
  • Amazon rolls out Alexa Guard, to help protect your home while you’re out (TC)
  • Attention, Amazon Shoppers: Google Wants Some of Your Spending Money (NYT)
  • Google’s latest app, Rivet, uses speech processing to help kids learn to read (TC)
  • Google Express becomes an all-new Google Shopping in big revamp (TC)
  • Google Makes New Push to Bolster Travel-Related Searches (Bloomberg)
  • Google Unveils Slew of New Digital Ad Formats in Amazon Battle (Bloomberg)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Content emerges as new driver of Chinese e-commerce (TN)
  • Huawei launches AI-backed database to target enterprise customers (TC)
  • Ant Financial-backed Hello Chuxing seeks hefty financing that would take valuation to USD 4 billion (KRA)
  • Chinese developers elbow into Japan’s mobile game market (Nikkei)
  • Ten-second menu app “Taberly” adds an online ordering function to buy ingredients with just a few taps, and announces procurement of 250 million yen (TC)
  • Taiwan Helping Tech Firms That Choose Southeast Asia Over China (Bloomberg)
  • In India election, a $14 software tool helps overcome WhatsApp controls (Reuters)
  • India’s largest mobile wallet company Paytm now offers a credit card (TC)
  • Big Upsurge In E-Commerce Drives Southeast Asia’s Online Economy (Forbes)
  • Ecommerce: What the past 10 years mean for the future; The past decade has seen the emergence of ecommerce unicorns, big-ticket acquisitions, and deep-pocketed global investors. The final draft of the ecommerce policy will determine who holds the edge in the next decade (Forbes)
  • Paytm CEO suddenly has no problem with “the most evil” company’s WhatsApp Pay (qz)
  • Uber’s IPO flop bodes ill for Grab and Go-Jek; Southeast Asian ‘decacorns’ must show path to profitability, say experts (Nikkei)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • AI at the Barbican: in the realm of mind games; A wide-ranging new exhibition in London explores developments in artificial intelligence (FT)
  • Driverless electric truck starts deliveries on Swedish public road (Reuters)
  • Adobe brings new Amazon and Google integrations to Magento (TC)
  • Disney to Buy Comcast’s Hulu Stake and Take Full Control of Streaming Service (NYT)
  • Match now offers dating coaches who help its members with profiles, dating challenges (TC)
  • Intel’s new boss wants to teach the chipmaker new tricks; When fear of missing out meets financial ruthlessness (Economist)
  • Questions Persist About Uber’s Profits-And Its Stock Falls Further (Forbes); Uber and Lyft Might Never Be Profitable. Investors Are Waking Up to That. (Barron’s); Uber Eats Needs to Deliver More Than Ever; Its explosive growth is crucial at a time when Uber’s largest business, ride hailing, is slowing. (Bloomberg); Uber’s IPO Debacle Raises Hairy Questions for WeWork (Bloomberg)
  • San Francisco just banned facial-recognition technology (CNN)
  • CrowdStrike IPO: 5 things to know about the cybersecurity unicorn (MW)
  • Ken Fisher: Subscription Advice a “Stupid Model” (Barron’s)
  • EDA Vendors Spread Wings as Market Softens (EET)

Life

  • The Spectacular Implosion of Dr. Cho’s ‘Nefarious Network’: Hong Kong’s markets are plagued by stock manipulation, share pledging, cross-ownership and margin lending. Regulators say they’re going to take action. (Bloomberg)
Advertisement

Filed under Innovation

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: