Quoteworthy: "Sometimes the marketing moves faster than the process." –— Nereides Antonio Giamundo de Bourbon, BN Group’s head of investor relations, responding to various discrepancies between the announcements the company made and fact checks conducted by Reuters.
TikTok CEO Quits as Trump administration plans ban
TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer has resigned just months after taking the helm of the viral short video app, stepping out of the crossfire as the Trump administration targets the business owned by China’s ByteDance.
Mayer told employees of his decision in an internal memo and a company spokeswoman confirmed his resignation. Vanessa Pappas, currently general manager of ByteDance’s prized international service, will take his place.
Mayer joined TikTok as CEO in May, leaving one of the top jobs at The Walt Disney Co for more than a decade where he helped the world’s largest entertainment company strategise and expand its offerings. His appointment by ByteDance had been expected to smooth relations between the social media giant and Washington. It was also done to enforce the notion that TikTok operates as a separate entity from its Beijing-based parent.
But his role had been in question for weeks. Hired to run TikTok’s global operations, Mayer was instead pulled into a likely breakup of the business as the Trump administration pressed for a sale of the US division because of its alleged threat to national security. Microsoft Corp has confirmed it is in negotiations to buy TikTok’s operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand while Oracle Corp is also considering a bid, Bloomberg News has reported. —Bloomberg
Phillip Capital Management launches innovation-focused global equity fund for retail investors
Phillip Capital Management has launched the Phillip Global Rising Yield Innovators Fund, a move it says will “identify enabling or disruptive innovative enterprises, working to bring new and unique solutions to solve today’s and tomorrow’s high-value problems”.
“Our investments will combine technology companies that are current market leaders as well as companies that have the potential to scale up,” says Linus Lim, director and CEO of Phillip Capital Management.
“One aspect of our strategy will be to consider growth leaders that are beginning to mature over time and as their cash flow grows will also create more income opportunities for our investors,” he adds.
According to Phillip Capital Management, companies relevant to this innovation theme are those that rely on or benefit from the development of new products or services, technological improvements and advancements.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed a drawback of the traditional “pure dividend strategy”, where investors invest into traditional businesses for high dividend yields. This phenomenon is further reflected by the contrasting performance between tech indices and other market indices.
It cited that the lack of technology stocks in the local stock market has resulted in the poor performance of the Straits Times Index (STI) during this downturn.
On a year-to-date basis, the STI is down 19.6% as of June 25, while the US major tech index Nasdaq Composite is up by about 11% and still trading at record territory.
As such, the fund’s investing strategy is to invest primarily in a portfolio of global equities with quality businesses that generate sustainable long-term value.
It also believes that superior, innovative companies with growth models that are resilient in economic downturns will continue to ride on secular growth tailwinds. In doing so, it aims to achieve a net fee of return that exceeds that of its reference benchmark, which is the Dow Jones Global Select Dividend Index.
To avoid potential value traps hampering returns, the fund will seek to avoid cyclical or old economy stocks that may be once-stable. “In our view, innovative companies could be more resilient in economic downturns to deliver higher than average return on investment over the long-term horizon.” —Lim Hui Jie
Circuit breaker measures drag business receipts of services by 13.9% in 2Q2020
The Covid-19 health-turned-economic crisis has upended almost every sector, especially the services industry which was affected by the disrupted operations during the “circuit breaker” measures.
Takings for the sector plunged 13.9% y-o-y in 2Q2020 ended June, according to the Business Services Index released by the Department of Statistics (Singstat) on Aug 27.
Meanwhile, the quarterly index came in 13.3% lower, as the circuit breaker and eventually phase one of Singapore’s re-opening spanned most of the quarter.
The metric registers the short-term changes in the amount of business or operating receipts for the services sector. It strips out receipts from wholesale and retail trade, accommodation and food services.
Registering a 74.3% plummet, recreational and personal services logged the highest decline due to the closure of attractions and gaming segments during the circuit breaker period.
Likewise, the travel restrictions during the period resulted in a 23.3% decline in the takings from transport and storage services.
Declines were also seen in business services (–21.5%) and health and social services (–13.1%) which were affected by the postponement of non-urgent elective surgeries during the quarter.
The financial and insurance services sector meanwhile bucked the trend with a 0.4% expansion in takings. —Amala Balakrishner
Hong Kong denies visa to journalist hired by Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong Free Press said the city’s government rejected a work visa application for a new editor, fuelling concerns about press freedom after China imposed a sweeping national security law in the Asian financial centre.
Aaron Mc Nicholas was denied a work visa on Aug 25 after waiting for almost six months and was given no reason for the decision, the publication said in a statement. A representative for
Hong Kong’s Immigration Department didn’t provide a comment when contacted by Bloomberg.
“It appears we have been targeted under the climate of the new security law and because of our impartial and fact-based coverage,” Editor-in-Chief Tom Grundy said in a statement. “We are a local news outlet and our prospective editor was a journalist originally from Ireland, so this is not another tit-for-tat measure under the US-China trade dispute.”
The uncertainty over who is allowed to live and work in the Asian financial hub builds on the concerns about dwindling freedoms in Hong Kong in the wake of the national security law. Earlier this month, police arrested media mogul Jimmy Lai over alleged breaches of the new law and raided the offices of his flagship Apple Daily, the city’s largest pro-democracy newspaper.
Though rare, Hong Kong has rejected visas for journalists before — Financial Times editor Victor Mallet in 2018 and New York Times reporter Chris Buckley earlier this year. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong this month issued a statement voicing concerns about slow visa issuances to foreign journalists.
Founded in 2015, Hong Kong Free Press is one of a handful of local English-language publiications in the city and largely covers domestic news, funding itself through donations.
Before the Hong Kong Free Press, Mc Nicholas’s last role was at Bloomberg News. A representative for Bloomberg declined to comment.— Bloomberg
