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Tag: China

  • Desigual plans 60 stores in Mainland China

    Desigual plans 60 stores in Mainland China

    Spanish fashion label Desigual says it plans to open 60 stores in Mainland China, including flagships in Shanghai and Beijing.

    The launch will be via a joint venture with E-Shine, also a local partner of listed fashion company Septwolves Industrial.

    Desigual aims to reach an annual turnover of US$40 million five years from now, with half coming from online and the remainder from sales through physical stores. The company said its primary focus will be Chinese digital channels.

    “This collaboration is in line with our strategy of continuing to develop our business in the Asian market, growing China as well as Japan, which is our main market outside of Europe, as well as in other significant markets such as South Korea,” said Alberto Ojinaga, MD at Desigual.

    “Our goal is for sales made through the digital channel and those coming from geographies outside of Europe to represent 60 per cent of turnover by next year. Right now this percentage stands at 49 per cent.”

    The move is part of the fashion company’s strategy to secure more market shares in Asia, which constitutes 6.5 per cent of its international business. Desigual entered China in 2014 via Tmall launch.

    “Knowledge of consumer habits and preferences in the Chinese market is key to success,” Ojinaga added. “Our objective is to achieve even greater growth in the digital environment and to reach out to new customers with products designed for them and suited to the characteristics of the market.”

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  • China Mobile Partners With ZTE to Unveil World’s First 5G NTN Field Trial

    China Mobile Partners With ZTE to Unveil World’s First 5G NTN Field Trial

    ZTE Corporation has announced its collaboration with China Mobile Research Institute, China Transport Telecommunications & Information Group, the Beijing Branch of China Mobile and other partners to showcase what it calls the world’s first 5G NTN (Non-Terrestrial Network) field trial at the 5G-Advanced Industry Development Summit in Beijing.

    The company said in its press release that this brings achievement breakthroughs in two aspects, ultra-long distances as far as 36,000 km and direct connection between mobile phones, that are enabled by two innovations including dynamic compensation of big latency and RF data conversion between the satellite and terrestrial.

    The trial was end-to-end and demonstrated services such as short messages and voice services, both with satisfactory performances. The trial included a comprehensive set of tests of the direct connection between the mobile phone and the satellite, which supports a network with ubiquitous connectivity, more use cases, highly integrated industry chains and low O&M costs.

    The trial was based on the 3GPP R17 and on a network architecture using high-orbit satellites for transparent forwarding to implement end-to-end link interconnection among terminals, satellites, terrestrial gateways, base stations, core networks and servers.

    The L-band satellite and terrestrial gateways, located between the NTN terminal and the base station, were responsible for air-interface message transmission. The terrestrial gateways were interconnected with the 5G NTN base station. The terminal was connected to the terrestrial core network and service platform through the satellite, gateways and NTN base station in turn to implement end-to-end service interconnection.

    During this trial, communication cases such as synchronization, broadcasting, accessing and data transmission, and services such as short text messages and voice messages were successfully tested. The latency of 64-byte ping is about 4s. The performance met the expectations, indicating the solution is very likely feasible. In the future, there will be emergency communication service pilot projects in Beijing, Yunnan and other provinces.

    Together with the terrestrial network, the 5G non-terrestrial network (5G NTN) forms an integrated ubiquitous network with a variety of use cases, highly integrated industry chains and low O&M costs. It uses satellite communication for powerful coverage to meet people’s demands for better accessibility of the mobile internet around the world and provide emergency, marine, remote areas and IoT communication services, facilitating the comprehensive development of CHBN (Customer, Home, Business, New).

    The satellite telecommunication network can reuse the cellular network and significantly reduce terminal cost. In addition, the number of cellular network base stations and centralized deployment can significantly reduce deployment and O&M costs.

    In this new stage of 5G-Advanced, this end-to-end 5G NTN field trial’s success helps build a solid foundation for a direct phone-to-satellite communication business model. This service provides users with more reliable and consistent experiences and connects space, air, ground and sea, forming an integrated ubiquitous network.

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  • China’s Pinduoduo beats revenue estimates, eyes overseas growth

    China’s Pinduoduo beats revenue estimates, eyes overseas growth

    Shanghai-based e-commerce giant Pinduoduo Inc reported quarterly revenue above Wall Street estimates on Monday, buoyed by a major shopping festival and price promotions to lure China’s increasingly reluctant consumers to open their wallets.

    The group’s U.S.-listed shares rose more than 15% in trading before the bell.

    “We saw a recovery in consumer sentiment in the second quarter, especially during the 618 shopping festival,” said Chief Executive Chen Lei.

    He cited agricultural produce, fast-moving consumer goods, consumer electronics, and beauty products as standout sales performers and said promotions had also driven up sales.

    As a regulatory crackdown ensnared tech giants across China in recent years, Pinduoduo heavily promoted its role in connecting farmers with consumers, waiving sales commissions to merchants selling agricultural products.

    During a post-earnings call with analysts, Chen said a similar program would be rolled out for craftsmen and artisans shortly.

    Pinduoduo, founded in 2015, first gained traction among consumers in smaller cities in China, but has since expanded its reach to top-tier cities.

    Budget constraints China-wide have become more apparent amid an economic slowdown and record-high youth unemployment.

    According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), July retail sales increased 2.7% year-on-year, below the expected 5% growth and the 3.1% rate seen in June.

    The platform is now looking to international expansion, with a cross-border e-commerce platform slated for launch in the coming months targeting the United States as its first market.

    “The overseas business is one of the opportunities we see… (we) see many peers in the industry achieving good results, so we believe it’s a direction worth trying out,” CEO Chen said.

    Pinduoduo may benefit from a deal struck between Beijing and Washington last Friday to allow U.S. regulators to vet accounting firms in China and Hong Kong, potentially putting to rest a dispute that threatened to boot Chinese companies from U.S. stock exchanges.

    Peers JD.com Inc, and Alibaba, will also potentially benefit from that deal. Both also beat expectations with quarterly earnings announced earlier this month.

    Pinduoduo’s total revenue stood at 31.44 billion yuan ($4.55 billion) in the quarter to June 30, compared with estimates of 23.68 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv data.

    Pinduoduo’s net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was 8.9 billion yuan during the quarter, compared with 2.41 billion yuan a year before.

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  • Ikea bets on China with $772 million investment

    Ikea bets on China with $772 million investment

    Ingka Group, the parent group of Swedish home furnishing giant Ikea, will invest 5.3 billion yuan (RM3.5bil) in China in the fiscal year 2023.

    The investment will be used for further business digitalization, construction of new stores and shopping malls and integrating multiple distribution channels, CEO and president of Ikea China Anna Pawlak Kuliga told a press conference yesterday.

    Lydia Song, vice-president of Ikea China, said the company would announce the investment of a wind power project in China later this year.

    As for the store expansion plan in China for the fiscal year 2023, which will start on Sept 1, Ikea will open a smaller scale store in Hefei, the capital city of East China’s Anhui province. It will also launch a second store in Xi’an of Shaanxi province.

    In early July, Ikea shut down its 8,500-sq-m store in northeast Shanghai’s Yangpu district.

    The major purpose is to realize more effective mapping in the city.

    While Ikea will remain “agile” in China over the next few years, Shanghai will remain as one of the key investment destinations for Ikea.

    Ikea announced a three-year strategy in 2019, especially for the Chinese market, which included 10 billion yuan (RM6.5bil) of investment.

    The company said it has fulfilled that investment target, with which Ikea developed more products and solutions for Chinese consumers, set up an omnichannel distribution network and offered more discounts.

    Over the past three years, Ikea’s services have extended to nearly one billion Chinese consumers with the online platforms such as the Tmall store and online shopping mall on WeChat.

  • Gentle Monster invests $15 million in Chinese AR startup

    Gentle Monster invests $15 million in Chinese AR startup

    Augmented reality headsets have been around for years, but none of the market players has really expanded beyond the techy demographic and broken into the mainstream. An AR startup hopes to change that by partnering with an eyewear fashion brand.

    Nreal, the well-funded Chinese AR headset maker that’s been making aggressive global expansion, said Thursday that it has raised $15 million from Korean sunglasses brand Gentle Monster’s parent company, IICOMBINED.

    The investment, which came just five months after its $60 million Series C extension, boosts its total raised to $240 million since its inception in 2017.

    The fresh capital will enable Nreal to accelerate its global expansion and double down on the company’s consumer business in the U.S., the company said.

    Neither Nreal nor Gentle Monster said much about how they might work together, but it’s almost certain that the single-investor capital infusion marks a step toward a strategic partnership. It won’t be surprising that Nreal’s glasses — aimed to be fashionable and lightweight from the outset — would hit the shelves of Gentle Master’s global retail stores someday.

    Indeed, Nreal’s co-founder Peng Jin said the firm’s goal for the next twelve months is to “scale and reach more audiences and aggressively grow adoption for AR technology starting with our latest AR glasses, Nreal Air.”

    Nreal has already carved out a global distribution network, much of it through its enterprise partners like Qualcomm and LG, in countries including the U.S., U.K., Japan, South Korea, Spain and Germany. It only debuted in China, where it’s based, in August.

    Nreal’s demand is currently the highest in the U.S., Japan and Korea, though the company expects China to grow soon to be one of its top markets.

    Earlier this week, Nreal unveiled an array of its products, including AR glasses such as Nreal Air and Nreal X (Chinese version) and an AR adapter for Apple devices in its home market.

    “Fashion and design will be important aspects in the future development of AR glasses as we continue to expand the sector’s consumer base,” said Jin. “As such, having Gentle Monster as our investor will open up interesting opportunities not just for Nreal, but also for the wider AR industry as a whole.”

    Gentle Monster, which entered China in 2016 and partnered with Huawei in 2019 to make smart glasses, opened its seventeenth store in Beijing in early August for further expansion in China.

    “This investment is exciting for the combination and exploration of the boundary of fashion and tech,” said co-founder of Gentle Monster and CEO of IICOMBINED Hankook Kim. “We will leverage both parties’ strength and make joint efforts to create more possibilities.”

  • ZTE Reports Double-Digit Gains in Revenue and Profit in H1

    ZTE Reports Double-Digit Gains in Revenue and Profit in H1

    ZTE has posted its financial results for the first half of 2022. According to the results, for the six months ended 30 June 2022, ZTE achieved operating revenue of RMB 59.82 billion, 12.7% higher than a year earlier. During the period, net profit attributable to holders of ordinary shares of the listed company reached RMB 4.57 billion, an increase of 12.0%, and net profit after extraordinary items attributable to holders of ordinary shares of the listed company amounted to RMB 3.73 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 65.8%. Basic earnings per share was RMB 0.96.

    In the first half of 2022, ZTE, despite the challenges of the pandemic and complex external environment, has ensured the security and stability of its own supply chain, realized continuous delivery to its global customers and continuously improved the company’s operational quality and efficiency, leveraging its advantages of being an ultimate cloud company, rich experience in digital transformation, mature business continuity system, and its own self-developed cloud platform that can support tens of thousands of people across the globe to work online.

    ZTE has been committed to strengthening its end-to-end R&D investment and innovations. In the first half of 2022, the company’s R&D spending reached RMB 10.15 billion, accounting for 17.0% of its total operating revenue.

    From January to June of 2022, ZTE’s operating revenue in both domestic and international markets and its three major businesses (carriers’ networks, government and enterprise, and consumer business) all achieved double-digit increase year on year. For the domestic market, the operating revenue reached RMB 40.60 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%, accounting for 67.9% of the total operating revenue, while for the international market, the operating revenue amounted to RMB 19.22 billion, a year-on-year increase of 12.3%, covering 32.1% of the total operating revenue.

    In terms of carriers’ networks, ZTE achieved an operating revenue of RMB 38.72 billion yuan, an increase of 10.5%, compared with a year earlier. In the operators’ traditional network market, ZTE proactively participated in the global 5G constructions including 5G network, Gigabit fiber network and 5G transport network, and continuously strengthened the competitiveness of its products and solutions, building excellent cost-effective networks for its customers and optimizing the market structure accordingly.

    To date, ZTE has entered into 5G cooperation with over 110 operators across the globe, covering major markets including Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the company has actively seized the opportunity of domestic operators’ cloud-network transformation, and deeply integrated its own capabilities with their requirements while providing its well-matched products and solutions. ZTE has secured the domestic operators’ centralized procurements for multiple years.

    In terms of government and corporate business, ZTE’s operating revenue increased by 18.3% year on year to RMB 6.71 billion during the period. Focusing on the internet, finance, electric power, transportation, government affairs and the industry, and relying on its “Precision Cloud Network” and “Digital Nebula”, the company has deeply cultivated the digital transformation of the industry, promoted the deep integration of 5G and the industry, and fully participated in major projects such as the east-data-west-computing project in China. In addition, ZTE’s core products and solutions such as server and storage, data center, enterprise network, video conference, cloud computer and distributed database were widely applied in the government and corporate markets, gradually forming a good cloud network ecosystem.

    In consumer business, ZTE harvested revenue of RMB 14.39 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.5% in the first half of 2022. ZTE, committed to offering its global users a seamless digital lifestyle in all scenarios, continued to make efforts in branding, products and channels to promote the sales of personal and household products.

    During the period, ZTE, while consolidating the businesses in the first curve represented by wireless and wired products, has been rapidly expanding its businesses in the second curve, including server and storage products, terminals, 5G industry applications, automotive electronics, and digital energy. In H1, the company has achieved around 40% increase year on year in terms of the operating revenue from its second curve business.

    Moving forward, ZTE, adhering to the positioning of “a driver of digital economy”, will keep continuously promoting its own digital transformation. The company will stay committed to building a highly resilient organization and implementing the “dual-carbon” strategy to achieve sustainable development. In addition, the company will actively strengthen cooperation with its customers, industries and ecological partners to jointly advance the development of the global digital economy.

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  • Pinduoduo Trains Farmers in Online Commerce to Boost Agricultural Incomes

    Pinduoduo Trains Farmers in Online Commerce to Boost Agricultural Incomes

    Agricultural e-commerce platform Pinduoduo has helped to raise incomes for rural farming communities by widening market access for producers, who can now bypass intermediaries to sell directly to consumers.

    But while many farmers are aware of the benefits of selling online, they may still find it daunting to set up and run their own e-commerce business without help and training. This is especially so for those with less education and are less tech-savvy.

    Pinduoduo, which operates a digital platform connecting millions of farmers and consumers, identified the lack of digital skills as a potential sticking point toward wider adoption of agricultural e-commerce. Founded in 2015, Pinduoduo started as an online fresh produce retailer and has made it a core priority to use technology to improve agriculture.

    The company’s “Tech for Agri” approach is centered on increasing market accessibility, improving digital inclusion and literacy, and fostering innovation as key enablers for agricultural modernization.

    Recognizing that the lack of internet-savvy talent may prevent farming communities from participating fully in e-commerce and the digital economy, Pinduoduo set about creating a comprehensive learning platform to deliver courses for aspiring farmers to become agricultural entrepreneurs.

    In 2019, Pinduoduo partnered with China Agricultural University to train farmers on how to run their own online businesses. The inaugural class in Yunnan province was attended by dozens of local farmers. That year, Pinduoduo held more than 1,000 hours of instructor-led training sessions and trained hundreds of farmers. Together with its online courses, the company helped train 490,000 agricultural merchants.

    Since then, Pinduoduo has developed an extensive suite of online courses covering topics in business, finance and marketing. Delivered in the form of articles, videos and livestreaming sessions, the on-demand online courses leverage on the widespread availability of the mobile internet and provide a valuable resource for farmers and merchants to learn at their own pace.

    Pinduoduo has also focused on training the younger generation of farmers to take up e-commerce and help their communities. Many of these youths left their rural hometowns to work in big cities but have the desire to return to start their own businesses and to be closer to their families.

    As of the end of October 2021, more than 126,000 “New Farmers” born after 1995 have set up online stores on Pinduoduo. Many of these younger “New Farmers” have tertiary education.

    As digital natives, these “New Farmers” are more open to new technology and innovations. They are also more mindful of the need for more sustainable development in agriculture.

    Each young “New Farmer” is estimated to inspire another five to 10 youths to go into e-commerce. On average, each young “New Farmer” creates 50 local jobs directly and indirectly by boosting demand for ancillary services from logistics to packaging. This helps to grow agriculture-related industries and bolsters the agricultural ecosystem.

    To date, Pinduoduo has connected an estimated 16 million farmers to the digital economy through its platform. With its more than 800 million active consumers, Pinduoduo is helping to aggregate and channel consumer demand to benefit rural communities.

     

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  • China’s JD beats quarterly revenue estimates

    China’s JD beats quarterly revenue estimates

    JD.com, beat Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Tuesday (Aug 23) as lockdowns in China to control the spread of the coronavirus boosted online shopping and the company’s “618” shopping event.

    US-listed shares of the Beijing-based company rose nearly 7 per cent in premarket trading.

    The company reported second-quarter revenue of 267.6 billion yuan (US$39.07 billion), topping analysts’ average estimate of 262.31 billion yuan, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.

    Sales in its product segment, which includes online retail sales, rose 2.9 per cent in the quarter, while those from services such as logistics and marketing jumped 21.9 per cent.

    JD.com said net income attributable to ordinary shareholders rose to 4.38 billion yuan, or 1.37 yuan per American Depository Share (ADS) for the three months ended June 30, from 794 million yuan, or 0.25 yuan per ADS, a year earlier.

    Peer Alibaba, beat expectations earlier this month even as it reported flat quarterly revenue growth for the first time in its history.

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  • Chinese retailer Miniso to ditch Japanese styling after backlash

    Chinese retailer Miniso to ditch Japanese styling after backlash

    Chinese budget retailer Miniso Group Holding Ltd. apologized for styling itself as a Japanese designer brand and said it would change its logo, amid a wave of local nationalism fueled by geopolitical tension over Taiwan.

    The Guangzhou-based company has long promoted itself as Japanese-influenced, with a Japanese chief designer and Japanese characters on its shopping bags and marketing language. This, it said in a statement on Miniso’s official Weibo account Thursday, was “wrong.”

    “We used wrong brand positioning and marketing campaigns during the early days,” the statement said. “We feel regret and guilt.”

    The seller of cheap household goods has been “removing” Japanese elements since 2019, including re-designing its logo and shopping bags to change Japanese characters to Mandarin ones in its more than 3,000 local outlets, said the statement. It will also more closely police overseas units.

    The pivot comes after Miniso became a target of nationalistic social media users due to an Instagram post by its Spanish unit in July that described a cheongsam-clad toy as a Japanese geisha. It apologized then as well, but pressure has grown as the China-Japan relationship deteriorated after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan earlier this month.

    China called off a face-to-face meeting between Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Japanese counterpart over a Group of Seven statement expressing concern about Beijing’s “threatening actions” around Taiwan during and after Pelosi’s visit.

    The Miniso pivot is another example of how consumer nationalism in China has become a minefield for brands to navigate, with companies ranging from Mercedez-Benz Group AG to Hennes & Mauritz AB. being boycotted for perceived slights in recent years. It also reflects how “foreign” elements have now become a liability in China, a sea change from several years ago when Miniso capitalized on the popularity of actual Japanese chains like Muji to lure local shoppers.

    Anti-Japanese sentiment is growing across the country. Local media reported that a young woman was detained and interrogated by police last week after wearing a kimono for a photo shoot in the eastern city of Suzhou.

    Officials in Tokyo have become increasingly outspoken about the importance of Taiwan’s national security to Japan’s own stability, a development that has sparked anger in China, which considers Taiwan part of its territory.

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  • Baidu Bags China’s First Fully Driverless Robotaxi Licenses

    Baidu Bags China’s First Fully Driverless Robotaxi Licenses

    China search engine giant Baidu Inc said on Monday it has obtained permits to operate fully driverless robotaxi services on open roads from two Chinese cities, the first of their kind in the country.

    The permits, awarded by the southwestern municipality of Chongqing and the central city of Wuhan, allow commercial robotaxis to offer rides to the public without human safety drivers in the car. They come into effect on Monday.

    Baidu said they marked a “turning point” in China’s policy-making towards autonomous driving.

    “These permits have deep significance for the industry,” Wei Dong, chief safety operation officer of Baidu’s Intelligent Driving Group, told Reuters in an interview. “If we think of the exploration of space, this moment is equal to landing on the moon.”

    At first, Baidu will deploy a batch of five fee-charging robotaxis in each city, where they will be allowed to operate in designated areas from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Wuhan and 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Chongqing, the company said in a statement.

    The service areas span 30 square km (11.58 square miles) in Chongqing’s Yongchuan District and 13 sq km in the Wuhan Economic & Technological Development Zone.

    In April, Baidu’s Apollo and Toyota Motor Corp-backed Pony.ai said that they received permits in Beijing to deploy robotaxis without safety drivers in the driver’s seat on open roads within a 60 sq km area. But the Beijing permits  still require them to have a safety driver in the passenger seat. These services have started.

    Baidu is also in talks with local governments in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, to secure licenses within a year to test fully-driverless and unpaid robotaxis in those cities, according to Wei.

    China’s efforts to fast-track autonomous vehicle trials and permits come as U.S. regulators are also pushing ahead with milestone-setting autonomous driving policies.

    In January, self-driving company Cruise received a permit from the California Public Utilities Commission that allows it to offer paid and fully driverless rides from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in select streets in San Francisco.

    Apollo Go, Baidu’s robotaxi service, has operated over 1 million rides across 10 Chinese cities since its launch in 2020.

    Baidu has not reported any problems with the service and has not given a breakdown for how much it has invested in the project.

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  • China Mobile and ZTE Complete Commercial Trial of Co-Routing Detection

    China Mobile and ZTE Complete Commercial Trial of Co-Routing Detection

    ZTE, together with the Yunnan Branch of China Mobile, has completed the commercial trial of co-routing detection in China Mobile’s existing optical network in Yunnan province, China.

    The trial involves two scenarios: co-cable routing detection and co-ditch routing detection. The trial result shows that there will be an early warning of active/standby paths in the same optical fiber or route so that it can be bypassed in time based on fiber sensing. In addition, the originally dumb fiber resource will be visualized. Thus, the operator’s service reliability and network O&M efficiency can be greatly improved.

    As digital transformation is developing rapidly in all industries, the optical network is facing a systems intelligence need. And intelligent O&M emerges as one of the main focuses when addressing the problem of low service survivability caused by co-routing.

    To resolve this, China Mobile has cooperated with ZTE to verify the feasibility of co-cable and co-ditch routing detection of service paths on the existing network, including active/standby service routing detection and inbound/outbound service route detection at specific sites.

    According to the verification, ZTE’s optical network co-routing detection function can specifically detect co-cable routing of 14 optical cables and 54 fiber cores by dynamic parameter optimization, AI algorithm and experience threshold adjustment. Also, ZTE takes contrast analysis and on-site specialist inspection to exactly detect co-ditch routing of 12 optical cables and about 20 ditches in 4 core equipment rooms. The verification proves that ZTE can provide the operator with flexible optical network co-routing detection methods, along with real-time, accurate and reliable intelligent O&M measures, which well guarantees service survivability and alleviates the difficulty in dumb fiber resource management.

    “The function can effectively solve actual problems in production and operation. Before this, active/standby routes are planned on the resource management map and routing is determined manually, which leads to high error rate. Additionally, the accuracy of resource management information is hardly under control, thereby increasing routing risks,” said a spokesperson at the Network Management Center of China Mobile Yunnan.

    “In the original routing detection, people pulled or pushed the cable underground manually, which resulted in low efficiency and service interruption. However, the co-routing detection now leverages dumb fiber resources without service switching. The innovative function remarkably reduces manpower and ensures service survivability while allowing resource management information modifications and route re-planning to avoid service interruption losses,” he added.

    The trial will further promote the growth of the operator’s autonomous optical network and lay a strong foundation for its intelligent network in the “east-data-west-computing” project.

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  • UBS Outlines Mass Millionaire Ambitions in Greater China

    UBS Outlines Mass Millionaire Ambitions in Greater China

    UBS global wealth management has established a dedicated team to mass millionaires in the region and unveiled its ambition to double the number of clients in the segment for the Greater China market.

    UBS global wealth management has established a team dedicated to the coverage of private clients – mass millionaires with a net worth of $1 million to $5 million – the bank said during a media briefing yesterday when it announced the launch of the new business model for Greater China. Within this segment, it is mainly targeting four main groups of individuals: entrepreneurs, young families, financial and non-financial professionals.

    The Swiss private bank aims to double the number of clients in the segment over the next three years. Currently, the private client segment accounts for a mid-single-digit percentage of the total number of Greater China clients.

    The private client team has about 60 staff, including client advisors and specialists, alongside a wealth concierge team.

    In covering the mass millionaire market in Greater China, UBS’ digital capabilities will feature strongly, particularly with the usage of its content platform Circle One, which includes actionable investment ideas, and its digital banking app.

    UBS will rely on three levels of engagement with private clients including bank-led investing via discretionary portfolio management, an advisory model and self-directed investing – an option that is particularly suitable for financial professionals who are well acquainted with financial products and services.

    The private client market is a well-established segment in the industry with Hong Kong being one of the fastest creators of mass wealth, including one millionaire out of every 13 people living in the city, according to a study by Citibank. In fact, consumer banking units in Hong Kong have longstanding businesses covering the segment under the same nomenclature including Citigold Private Client and DBS Treasures Private Client.

    But UBS is confident that its wealth management roots will serve it well with competitive advantages such as a dedicated multi-asset chief investment office or access to a product shelf designed for the ultra-rich with solutions like customized discretionary mandates or exclusive hedge funds.

    «We are not a retail bank,» said Jamee Wong, UBS’ private client head for Greater China, commenting on competing against established rivals in the market. «We are a premier private bank and a wealth manager. This is in our DNA. We do wealth management every single day.»

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  • Treasury Wine Estates boosts profit despite being shut out of China

    Treasury Wine Estates boosts profit despite being shut out of China

    Treasury Wine Estates Ltd posted a 5.3% rise in annual profit on Thursday, as strong U.S. sales and price hikes more than offset a hit from hefty Chinese tariffs on Australian wine.

    The world’s biggest standalone winemaker has been re-directing supply of its prized Penfolds label wines to the United States, Europe and domestically since China imposed an anti-dumping duty on some Australian wines in late 2020.

    The company, which also owns Wolf Blass and Wynns brands among others, said net sales revenue at its Americas unit grew 2.5%, benefiting from efforts to expand its presence in the market, including collaboration with rapper Snoop Dogg.

    Demand for Penfolds label wines, the company’s most premium offering, stayed strong despite soaring inflation in the United States and Europe. While total net sales revenue for the segment fell 9.1%, sales in markets outside China more than doubled.

    The winemaker said it was raising prices across divisions to offset the impact of higher input costs and that it expected to improve its margins further in 2023.

    Treasury Wine’s global supply chain optimisation programme, which was rolled out in 2021, helped the firm save A$90 million ($62.47 million), more than an earlier estimate of A$75 million, and offset the impact from higher input costs.

    “We expect TWE will deliver strong earnings growth in FY23, reflecting a COVID recovery in its higher margin channels,” analysts at Morgans said.

    Treasury posted a profit attributable of A$263.2 million for the year ended June 30, higher than A$250.0 million reported a year ago but below an estimate of A$282 million from Morgan Stanley. Overall sales revenue fell 3.6%.

    Shares of Treasury Wine fell about 1.5% in early trading, while the broader marker was down 0.5%.

    The company said its long-term financial objective was still to deliver sustainable top-line growth, high single-digit average earnings growth, and a group operating earnings margin of more than 25%.

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  • UBS Hires Greater China Head of Philanthropy

    UBS Hires Greater China Head of Philanthropy

    UBS has hired a 25-year veteran as its head of philanthropy services for Hong Kong and the broader Greater China region.

    Ming Geng joins UBS Global Wealth Management as its head of philanthropy services for Hong Kong and Greater China, according to an internal memo. Based in Hong Kong, Geng reports to head of social impact & philanthropy services Tom Hall with local supervision by head of A&S client services Christina Tung.

    Geng has over 25 years of experience in global health, global development affairs and philanthropy. Prior to joining UBS, she was the head of corporate affairs at Viatris Pharmaceutical, Greater China.

    Previously she served as the deputy director at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s China office between 2008 and 2019 following 10 years of leadership and management experience at various other global organizations including The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, The Yew Chung Education Foundation, and UNICEF.

    A spokesperson for the bank confirmed the hire.

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  • FedEx to expand operations at Guangzhou hub

    FedEx to expand operations at Guangzhou hub

    FedEx Express announced last week it has signed an agreement with Guangdong Airport Authority Logistics Company to expand and upgrade the FedEx Guangzhou Gateway by establishing a new operations center at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.

    The new ‘FedEx South China Operations Centre’ will cover an area of over 41,000 square metrers, more than double the size of its existing gateway, and is scheduled for operations in 2027.

    The facility will connect outbound shipments from southern China with the FedEx international network through the Asia Pacific hub, where it will also receive and process inbound shipments.

    The operations center will include offices, state-of-the art sorting systems, operations areas and a warehouse with a capacity to sort up to 25,000 packages and documents per hour, three times the sorting efficiency of the current facility.

    FedEx’s Asia Pacific Hub at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport connects Asian customers to the US and North American network through Anchorage and Memphis (USA), and the European network through Paris (France) and Cologne (Germany).

    The FedEx Asia Pacific Hub currently operates more than 210 flights per week, with the Guangzhou gateway handling approximately 40 percent of the hub’s import and export cargo volume.

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