Ascott wins contracts to manage 4 properties in SE Asia; sets 160,000-unit target for 20231/29/2018
SINGAPORE (Jan 29): CapitaLand says its serviced residence business unit, The Ascott, has won contracts to manage four properties with 1,200 units across Malaysia, the Philippines and China.
Under the contracts, Ascott has entered new investment destinations Malacca and Davao in Malaysia and the Philippines, respectively. It will also be increasing its presence in Guangzhou, China, while opening its fifth property under the lyf brand in Cebu, the Philippines.
In a press release on Monday, Ascott says it is ramping up its expansion with a target to double its portfolio to 160,000 units globally by 2023.
The new contracts boosts Ascott’s properties under management worldwide to over 160, with about 30,000 units under development. Out of these, 35 properties with more than 6,500 units are scheduled to open this year, half of which are in China, and a quarter in Southeast Asia. The new management contracts have increased Ascott’s portfolio in Southeast Asia to about 23,000 units in 111 properties across 34 cities. Its newly-secured properties in Guangzhou has also strengthened Ascott’s foothold in China with over 20,000 units in about 110 properties across 31 cities.
"Besides accelerating our growth through management contracts, which currently make up 60% of our portfolio, we will continue to seek opportunities for strategic investments in strong operating businesses that will widen our customer reach and give us a competitive edge. We will also grow our franchise business, particularly through our Citadines and Quest brands, and form strategic alliances with leading companies that have a pipeline of properties for us to manage,” says, Kevin Goh, CEO of Ascott.
“We will focus on key gateway cities in our two biggest markets, China and Southeast Asia, as well as markets such as Australia, Europe, Japan, South Korea and the U.S. Expanding our global network will allow us to leverage greater economies of scale and strengthen our earnings. To position Ascott for the future, we will harness digital innovation and technology to enhance customer experience,” he adds. Shares in CapitaLand closed flat at $3.84 on Friday.
0 Comments
Alibaba’s cloud computing business is to deploy its big data services package for cities in Kuala Lumpur to help Malaysia’s government with the running of its capital city and potentially other parts of the country in the future.
“City Brain,” an Alibaba Cloud service that uses big data and artificial intelligence on its cloud computing infrastructure, will be put to use in the city after an agreement with local council Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) was announced today.
City Brain was first adopted by the government of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s home city, in 2016 to help run operations more efficiently. That’s quite a nebulous scope of work, but essentially the service pulls in all kinds of data — including video feeds, social media and traffic information — which is then processed to provide information that helps to manage daily activities. That could be responding to a traffic accident, or providing the data to redesign parts of the city to reduce vehicle congestion.
Last August, Alibaba Cloud signed an agreement to bring City Brain to Macau last year, but this Malaysia deployment will mark the first move outside of Greater China. Initially, the system will be put to work on traffic, with the potential to help on town planning, incident response, and other emergency services such as calculating the optimal route to a scene. Alibaba said it plans to expand the scope of its influence to cover areas that will be of interest to enterprises, startups, entrepreneurs and academic and research institutions.
Alibaba has invested significantly in both its cloud business and developing artificial intelligence technologies. We wrote about the lofty ambitions of Alibaba Cloud last year, and, in October, the Alibaba Group itself pledged to spend $15 billion on a global innovation program focused on cutting-edge tech.
The DAMO Academy — which stands for “discovery, adventure, momentum and outlook” — will have seven offices worldwide which will develop areas such as data intelligence, the Internet of Things, financial tech, quantum computing and human-machine interaction. Alibaba plans to collaborate closely with the world of academia. The fruits of the program are likely to be seen in services like Cloud Brain. Alibaba maintains strong links with authorities in Malaysia. It picked Kuala Lumpur as the site for a cross-border commerce initiative that it says will help develop e-commerce across Southeast Asia.
The first phase of the initiative will see the roll-out of Malaysia City Brain for use in traffic management, optimising the flow of vehicles and traffic signals by calculating the time taken to reach intersections.
Additionally, Malaysia City Brain can connect with various urban management systems, including emergency dispatch, ambulance call, traffic command and traffic light control, subsequently identifying the quickest route for emergency vehicles to arrive at a scene within the shortest time frame. Federal Territories Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor, in his speech, said Kuala Lumpur's population of 1.8 million is spending 250 million hours stuck in traffic. This was based on findings from a recent World Bank survey. "The number of hours wasted in traffic also leads to economic loss and a possible increase of mental stress to road users. This is a critical issue for all major cities that needs to be addressed," Adnan said. Malaysia City Brain will be executed with a base of 382 camera feeds and input from 281 traffic lights junctions, concentrated within central Kuala Lumpur.
PayPal won't be so crowdfunding-friendly in the future. The payment giant is dropping Purchase Protection for crowdfunding projects as of a user agreement change coming June 25th. From then on, you back efforts at your own risk -- if a campaign goes bust or otherwise doesn't deliver what you were promised, you can't dispute the PayPal charge to get your cash back. You might not want to take a chance on that too-cool-to-be-true gadget, then.
The move is unfortunate if you like to give artists and inventors a helping hand, but it's not all that shocking in light of crowdfunding's riskiness. Kickstarter notes that about 9 percent of its projects never deliver -- even though PayPal only handles some of those transactions, that's a lot of potential refunds. We've asked PayPal for its official reasoning, but it might simply be a matter of wanting to keep costs down.
Billionaire IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, who turned a business he launched as a teenager into one of the world's best known furniture brands, has died at the age of 91, the Swedish company said on Sunday.
IKEA's simple but sturdy designs and self-assembly products are now familiar in homes around the globe and the retailer is aiming to generate 50 billion euros ($62 billion) in annual revenues by 2020. Kamprad started IKEA in 1943 when he was just 17, but his big break came in 1956, when the company pioneered flat-pack furniture.
He got the idea when he watched an employee taking the legs off a table to fit it into a customer's car and realized that it could be developed to save money on transport, storage and sales space.
The business now has around 400 stores, many of them cavernous warehouses in out-of-town malls and roughly 1 billion people visited them last year. "One of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, has peacefully passed away, at his home in Smaland, Sweden, on the 27th of January," the company said. Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven praised Kamprad as an inspirational figure whose influence had reached far beyond his native land.
"Ingvar Kamprad was a unique entrepreneur who had a big impact on Swedish business and who made home design a possibility for the many not just the few," national news agency TT quoted Lofven saying.
Born on March 30, 1926, in southern Sweden, Kamprad started off selling matches to neighbors at the age of five and soon diversified his inventory to include seeds, Christmas tree decorations, pencils and ball-point pens. Despite his wealth, Kamprad prided himself on being frugal, driving an old car and encouraging staff to write on both sides of a sheet of paper to avoid waste. Kamprad was also controversial figure.
He was forced to apologize for his time as a member of the New Swedish Movement, a nationalist, far-right group that supported fascist parties around Europe, in the 1940s.
His decision to live abroad, mainly in Switzerland, to avoid Sweden's high income taxes was also widely criticized. In recent years, Kamprad had stepped away from the day-to-say running of the empire he created, though he remained an advisor. His sons -- Peter, Jonas and Mathias -- still sit on the boards of various IKEA entities, but the family is no longer at the helm. "Ingvar Kamprad was a great entrepreneur of the typical southern Swedish kind - hardworking and stubborn, with a lot of warmth and a playful twinkle in his eye," the company said. "He worked until the very end of his life, staying true to his own motto that most things remain to be done." ($1 = 0.8052 euros) (Reporting by Simon Johnson; Editing by Jane Merriman and Keith Weir)
Looking to grow or get liquid? If so, private equity might be a better option for you than venture capital.
Most business owners have heard all about venture capital funds as a source of funding for startups and early-stage companies. But what about more advanced profitable companies -- where can they go for their millions? Private equity -- or "PE" -- is the umbrella term for a broad range of funds that pool investors' money together to increase their buying power. Unlike most mutual funds, in which fund shares trade on active public securities exchanges, private equity funds attract investors who are willing to hold shares in privately held, non-traded funds (hence the term private equity). These big-dollar private equity funds are trolling the business landscape for new investment opportunities -- and that means you.
The good news for established business owners is that there are many more private equity funds investing in growth-oriented, revenue-generating companies than in venture-capital-oriented, high-technology companies with unproven business models. Plus, these funds are also much more inclined to invest in low-tech industries, multi-location service companies, franchise operators and Main Street manufacturing businesses than venture capital funds.
So, what can a private equity fund do for you? Here are five common investment scenarios that might help your company as its funding needs evolve. Buy out the company Private equity funds can buy 100 percent of the outstanding shares of your business, cashing out founding shareholders and previous investors. The founder may be retained to continue to manage the business, or the buyout fund can install a whole new senior management team and board of directors. The great thing about private equity funds is they have hard cash on hand to buy companies, thereby creating less uncertainty for business owners.
Cash out the founder
It's also possible to buy out just the owner-founder, while keeping existing investors in place. Sometimes owners sell because of illness, divorce settlements, retirement, boredom or unsolvable squabbles with investors. Founder buyouts are also possible when employees partner with a private equity fund to finance a "management buyout." Typically, private equity funds are more attracted to cashing out a founder if a controlling stake is available. Buy out existing investors Old investors can become "tired" investors, especially if they've had their money tied up for five or more years in a privately held business. The terms of these transactions can be tricky but doable, especially if the underlying company still has considerable financial upside ahead. Invest in expansion capital Owners of prosperous businesses are often tapped out. Every business and personal asset has already been pledged as collateral on bank loans, jeopardizing the company's growth prospects and competitive standing. Private equity funds can help prosperous business owners continue their winning ways with funding for acquisitions, new product line development and geographic expansion.
Recapitalize struggling businesses
Private equity funds are not scared of investing in companies with "hair on them," provided they are good candidates for a near-term turnaround. In private equity lingo, "recap" funds seek to recapitalize or restructure a company for the future. But don't expect fund managers to support the same business plan and management team that got the company in trouble in the first place. Recap and "special situation" funds are looking for clever ways to reinvent a revenue-generating business and build it back to profitability. What's most important for business owners to know about private equity investors is that they are financial investors. Unlike corporations that might buy all or part of a business for strategic operating advantages, financial investors make their decisions based solely upon their projected return on invested dollars. They may be sensitive to a founder's wishes, but not sentimental in negotiating final deal terms.
YOKOHAMA – The Kanagawa Prefectural Police plan to become the first in the nation to introduce predictive policing, a method of anticipating crimes and accidents using artificial intelligence, sources said Sunday.
The Kanagawa police will seek research expenses under the prefecture’s budget for fiscal 2018 starting April, hoping to put a predictive policing system in place on a trial basis before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, prefectural government sources said.
A system that can determine whether a single perpetrator is behind several crimes, predict an offender’s next move and detect where and when crimes or accidents are likely to occur would help police officers investigate crimes and prevent some from happening, they said.
It would allow them to patrol the suggested places at the most likely times to ensure safety and would also help speed up probes, the sources said. The AI-based system would employ a “deep learning” algorithm that allows the computer to teach itself by analyzing big data. It would encompass the fields of criminology, mathematics, and statistics while gathering data on times, places, weather and geographical conditions as well as other aspects of crimes and accidents.
It may also tap information gleaned from social media.
The Kanagawa police began studying the feasibility of using such a system last year and plans to begin joint research with private-sector entities this spring before putting a system into practice, the sources said. They have already used a system to list areas with frequent crime, but it has fallen short of helping to make extensive predictions. The National Police Agency set up an advisory panel in December to discuss how it should make use of AI.
Predictive policing is already in use in the United States, where critics are raising concerns that it can be used to violate human rights.
Many police forces in the U.S. use the predictive policing software PredPol, which its website says originated from research by the Los Angeles Police Department and the University of California, Los Angeles. PredPol predicts areas where a crime is likely to occur by analyzing data about past crimes. The American Civil Liberties Union and 16 other organizations issued a joint statement in August 2016 condemning the police for making computerized determinations the reason for questioning people or making arrests. The statement criticized the system for allegedly promoting prejudice against certain communities and residents. Toyoaki Nishida, professor of information science at Kyoto University graduate school, said preventive measures would be possible if a hypothesis that crimes are concentrated at particular times and places proved correct. But using such a method may have negative aspects, such as frequent police patrols of the same areas, he said. Such a system would first need to be accepted by residents before being put into use, he added.
LONDON (Jan 26): Royal Dutch Shell has spent over US$400 million on a range of acquisitions in recent weeks, from solar power to electric car charging points, cranking up its drive to expand beyond its oil and gas business and reduce its carbon footprint.
The scale of the buying spree pales in comparison to the Anglo-Dutch company's US$25 billion annual spending budget. But its first forays into the solar and retail power sectors for many years shows a growing urgency to develop cleaner energy businesses.
The investments are not limited to renewables such as biofuels, solar and wind. Shell, as well as rivals such as BP, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, are betting on rising demand for gas, the least polluting fossil fuel, to power the expected surge in electric vehicles in the coming decades.
To that end, Shell agreed in December to acquire independent British power provider First Utility for around US$200 million, according to several sources close to the deal. The value of the acquisition had not been previously disclosed. Shell declined to comment. With First Utility, the company hopes to find an outlet for its gas supplies via the retail power market, betting on rising demand as drivers charge electric vehicles at home.
Earlier this month, the company ventured back into solar after a 12-year hiatus when buying a 43.86% stake in Silicon Ranch Corporation for US$217 million.
In the last three months of 2017, Shell also invested in two projects to develop charging stations for electric vehicles across Europe's highways. It has also signed agreements to buy solar power in Britain and develop renewables power grids in Asia and Africa. According to analysts at Bernstein, Big Oil has invested over US$3 billion on renewables acquisitions over the past five years, most of which went towards solar.
"Green" merger and acquisition (M&A) activity today averages 13% of total energy M&A activity, they said.
"However greater scale is needed for the majors to effectively operate and leverage their trading skills in this market, necessitating more M&A," they said in a note. Other companies have also made investments. BP got back into solar power with a US$200 million investment in solar generator Lightsource late last year, six years after exiting the sector with a large writedown. Total bought battery maker Saft for US$1 billion in 2016.
A looming shortage of sand – a crucial resource once thought endless – could sink infrastructure projects, including those in China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Kampot, in southern Cambodia, seemed an unlikely place for a development boom. Its quiet and idyllic streets and neighbourhoods nestled on along the Praek Tuek Chhu River made the rapid pace of so-called progress in other parts of South-east Asia feel worlds away.
But that quiet was shattered seven years ago as a wave of infrastructure projects began to swell, including the restoration of a railway that linked to the capital, the refurbishment of colonial buildings and the construction of a resort in nearby by Bokor Hill. The rapid development that followed created a need for raw materials, especially one: sand to make cement and concrete. And in the quiet Kampot, the sight of dredging barges, that extracted sand from the estuary of the river, became frequent.
As development spread, the extraction of seemingly endless sand became more prosperous. During this time, Cambodia was also exporting sand to Singapore, which had an insatiable appetite for the material to expand its territory through artificial islands.
While the money was rolling in – mostly on the black market – the government ignored calls from activists warning of the negative environmental and social effect of sand extraction. But an investigation in 2016 revealed that Singapore reported to have imported US$752 million in sand from Cambodia, but Cambodia only reported US$5.5 million in exports to the Lion City. This discrepancy forced officials to eventually halt all exports of sand in July after a public outcry.
“It was a systematic fraud”, says Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, co-founder of Mother Nature, an environmental group that spearheaded the inquiry. “Taxes were evaded for 95 per cent of the exports”. Other countries in Asia, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, have also banned or restricted exports over the past couple of years because of the enormous environmental damage, while India has begun to limit licences it issues to export sand.
“In some [Asian] regions, the economic costs of the impacts from sand mining are starting to be noticed,” Peduzzi says. According to a 2014 UN report Peduzzi wrote, sand and gravel, which have surpassed fossil fuels and biomass to become the world’s most extracted materials, “are now being extracted at a rate far greater than their renewal”.
“Sand and gravel are the main commodities used for human activities. It is everywhere: roads, dams, buildings, airport, land reclamation …”, Peduzzi says. “It seems so usual and we have a lot of sand, we humans are poorly equipped for continuous impacts.” Asian countries have been some of the main contributors to sand scarcity as development booms. Beijing’s urban growth quadrupled from 1999 to 2009, while New Delhi tripled its population in 25-years. Singapore increased its territory through land reclamation by 25 per cent over the past 200 years. More than 70 per cent of total sand mined for construction in 2014 was used in Asia, mainly in China, according to the market-research firm Freedonia Group. “The amount of concrete used by China in the last 4 years is equal to the quantity used by the USA in 100 years,” Peduzzi says.
And the trend is poised to continue over the next years. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, Asia is slated to represent nearly 60 per cent of global infrastructure spending by 2025, mainly driven by China’s growth. In 2019 alone, Asia will need almost 11 million tonnes of sand, of which almost 8 million will be used in solely China, Freedonia Group says.
With an increasing demand and a limited supply, most of the analysts expect a spike in sand prices, especially in the developing world. “Globally the price of the sand has not risen much so far but it is foreseen that the cost will increase soon,” said Aurora Torres, researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and co-author of a 2017 study on sand extraction. In Vietnam, local media reported prices have already increased by 40 to 50 per cent and Freedonia Group forecasts that global price for construction sand will jump to US$8.60 per tonne in 2019 from 5.65 in 2004. According to Torres, the lack of sand is propelling the globalisation of “a resource that traditionally was extracted locally”. Impact on infrastructure plans will depend on national budgets. Singapore, the world’s largest importer, will probably have to pay a bigger bill to keep increasing the size of its territory, but “so far they will not stop their plan”, Peduzzi says. The lack of sand might jeopardise some of the bigger development projects in the Belt and Road plan, Peduzzi says, including islands in the South China Sea that are being made by “dredging boats to pump the sand in the lagoon and cover the coral with this to create artificial islands”. The shortage is also driving illegal sand extraction in the region, which can compromise the quality of the materials used in construction – and the stability of the structures built with such materials.
In India, “when there is an acute shortage … they will perhaps extract sand from the seasonal river beds”, says Ashutosh Limaye, head of research at global real estate services and consultancy firm Jones Lang LaSalle. “That high-moisture sand typically has very high silt content and this could go in detriment of the strength of the concrete for which that sand is used.”
But higher sand prices will be nothing compared to the environmental cost, Peduzzi says. “We will face the [environmental] impact from sand extraction, [depending] on where sand is being extracted.” Many countries in Asia are already seeing the effects. In Indonesia, several islands near Jakarta have disappeared because of illegal extraction. In China, sand extraction has caused a dramatic decline in the water levels of Poyang Lake, the country’s largest freshwater lake. In Cambodia, the sand extraction in the Koh Kong province has caused long-term environmental impacts in the river and coastal areas and have displaced fishing stocks, Gonzalez-Davidson, of Mother Nature, says. “Impacts are difficult to understand because there isn’t any specific scientific research but we have documented a massive decrease in the crab populations and seawater intrusion in the mangrove area”, he says. The ban allowed some recovery in the area, he says, but the long-lasting effect is still unknown.
Starbucks Corp. paid Chief Executive Officer Kevin Johnson $11.5 million for last year, when he succeeded founder Howard Schultz, whose salary was cut to $1 as part of his transition to chairman.
Johnson, 57, who took the helm of the coffee chain in April, received $5.91 million in restricted stock and stock options valued at $3.92 million, according to a regulatory filing Friday. He also got $1.15 million in salary and a $470,000 bonus.
The CEO has focused on fixing Starbucks’s mobile-ordering technology, which caused backups at pickup counters last year, and emphasized the importance of increasing the chain’s presence in China, as he fights slowing sales growth in the U.S. and abroad. Johnson’s bonus paid out below target after the company missed goals for operating income.
Shares of Seattle-based Starbucks tumbled 4.2 percent Friday, the most in six months, a day after posting disappointing results in all of its major regions. The stock fell less than 1 percent in the fiscal year ended Oct. 1, trailing the 16 percent advance for the S&P 500 Index.
Starbucks said this week it plans to spend $250 million on new employee benefits, including expanded paid parental leave for most of its hourly workers and paid sick days, in the wake of the U.S. tax overhaul. The company also announced raises for 150,000 hourly and salaried U.S. employees.
Schultz, 64, received $18 million in total compensation, including equity awards and a cash bonus.
With the brewing uncertainty regarding regulatory measures on cryptocurrency trading in South Korea, the government yesterday announced that it plans to collect tax on earning made from cryptocurrency investments and trading.
South Korea’s local media news publication Yonhap News reported that the government plans to collect a total of 24.2 percent from crypto earnings in the form of corporate and local taxes from exchanges this year. Under the existing laws, corporations with income more than 20 billion won (US$18.7 million) will be required to pay 22 percent in the form of corporate tax while 2.2 percent in the form of local income tax on their income. The law further states that exchanges should pay local income tax own earnings till the end of April last year while the corporate tax on earnings till the end of March, said an official from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.
As reported by Yujin Investment and Securities, South Korea’s Bithumb is expected to pay 60 billion won in corporate and local income taxes with its last year’s estimated earnings to be 317.20 billion won. Just like Bithumb, other exchanges like Upbit, Coinone and Korbit will also be paying its due taxes.
In response to this news, the Financial Services Commission said of Korea said: “Korea Financial Intelligence Unit announced that financial companies are in the process of drawing up a guideline to prevent cryptocurrency-related money laundering, although any specific measures are yet to be confirmed. The financial authorities have not looked into any measure to monitor cryptocurrency users’ transaction data.”
A lot has been happening in the South Korean crypt markets over the past two weeks. Earlier reports of a ban on crypto trading caused a lot of fear, uncertainty, and doubt within investors. After a huge uproar from the investor community, the South Korean government was forced to withdraw its decision and later stated that banning cryptocurrency trading is yet “not finalized.”
Moreover, there have also been reports about alleged insider trading by government officials following which the government has soon released a bill asking public officials to declare and disclose their investments in digital assets. Chung Dong-yong, a member of the South Korean National Assembly’s Administrative and Security Committee, who introduced this bill said: “As the government is taking the lead in cryptocurrency regulation, the public sector should take the lead in transparently disclosing the property proliferation through cryptocurrency.”
With no absolute clarity emerging out of the regulatory measures by the South Korean government, the overall crypto market is moving sideways and corrected majorly in the past two weeks. Just after yesterday’s announcement of tax introduction, the markets are seen bleeding a new wound with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and others seen correcting by almost 10% in past 24-hours, as per the data on CoinMarketCap. |
CORWIN GROUPLatest News Archives
October 2021
CategoriesBy submitting this form, you provide consent for Corwin Group to email you occasionally with industry news and promotions. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time.Testimonials & Disclaimer
Important Disclosure: By visiting this site, you agree to be bound by CorwinGroup’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. CorwinGroup.com is intended for accredited investors and otherwise qualified investors who understand and accept the risk associated with private investments. Investing in private investments on CorwinGroup involves risks, including, but not limited to market and industry risks, risks related to a specific property, currency fluctuation risk and liquidity constraints. Investments are not bank deposits and are not guaranteed. There is a potential for loss of part or ALL of the investment capital. CorwinGroup does not endorse any of the opportunities that appear on the site, nor does it make any recommendations regarding the appropriateness of particular opportunities for any investor. No correspondence or information provided on CorwinGroup.com or by any representative of CorwinGroup should be construed as a recommendation of a security. Each investor is advised to conduct his/her own due diligence as CorwinGroup does not provide any investment advice, business advice, or tax or legal advice. CorwinGroup is not registered under the Securities & Futures Act or the Financial Advisor’s Act. Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission in the country nor any federal or state securities commission or any other regulatory authority has recommended or approved of the investment or the accuracy or inaccuracy of any of the information or materials provided by or through the website. Please read Corwin’s Terms of Use for more detailed terms and conditions to which users of CorwinGroup are subject. |