29/03/2016 Asia Business Report

properties, blocked roads and caused the cancellation of flights.

Now on BBC News, all the latest business news live from Singapore.

The US government drops its court order for Apple to unlock an iPhone

used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. And one Japanese company

takes a bite out of gender inequality.

Hello and welcome to Asia Business Report, I'm Sharanjit Leyl. The FBI

has said it no longer needs the help of Apple to unlock the iPhone that

was used by the San Bernardino terrorists. Investigators had taken

Apple to court in order to force it to weaken the device's security so

they too could be accessed. Our technology correspondent David Lee

has the latest. -- data could be accessed.

Last week the FBI said an outside party had approached them with a way

to break into the phone without the need for Apple. It now appears that

method has worked. So a court case that had the US technology industry

united against the FBI has, for the time being, gone away. Now this

debate moves into more uncertain times. The US government has

knowledge of a security vulnerability that in theory weakens

Apple devices across the world. To protect its reputation, Apple will

rush to find and fix that floor and assuming it can do that, this row

will go back to square one. Dave Lee with the latest. Some

economic figures out of Japan this morning which show that consumers

are spending a bit more compared to a year ago, but really not as much

as expected. Household spending rose by just over 1% while retail sales

were up 0.5% and the jobless rate came in at 3.3%.

One of the ways Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying to

jumpstart the Japanese economy is by encouraging corporate Japan to

include more women in the managerial mix. While most firms are struggling

to achieve that, there's one company making progress and it is Calbee. We

put the spotlight on the snack manufacturer.

With this catchy commercial of shrimp chips, Calbee became a

household name in the 1960s. It may be an old fan but it's got new ideas

-- firm. Meet the team behind the current bestseller. In most Japanese

firms this team leader would be expected to work late. But she's a

mother and she keeps her hours. TRANSLATION: I was surprised when

they offered me the position, but we have many more female executives now

so it's becoming the norm. This woman is Calbee's highest

ranked female executive with 800 staff reporting to her. TRANSLATION:

When I first got mail staff reporting to me it felt awkward to

be their boss. I have two daughters so I can't be like the exec before

me, but the chairman said its OK so I decided to give it a go. When this

woman took the top job at Calbee in June, 2009, only 6% of managers were

women. Five years on the number of female managers has more than

tripled. The key is the top management decisions or policies

that some top management at Japanese companies are still very hesitant.

You've been a vocal advocate for diversity at your company, what do

you hope to see from the rest of corporate Japan in the next 5-ten

years? I expect them to promote is diversity. Any or some major

Japanese companies, like Toyota and Nissan, such huge companies, they

need to achieve this. If they reach a certain level, yes, most of the

other companies may follow, yeah. Calbee is too small.

At Toyota only 3% of managers are women. At Nissan it is slightly

higher at 8%. Most of corporate Japan is struggling to meet the

government's original target of increasing the proportion of female

managers to 13% by 2020, so December last year the target was cut by

half. For working mothers at Calbee it is

time to rush back to pick up their children, something most men don't

have to worry about. The winning formula at Calbee is the combination

of forwardthinking leadership coupled with the right talent. But

what will it take for the rest of corporate Japan to revamp their

recipe for success? Our Series continues tomorrow. We

will look at the government efforts to try to boost tourism as an engine

of economic growth. China's housing market has once

again heated up. Prices for residential property in Shenzhen

have increased nearly 60% over the past 12 months, while in Shanghai

they are up about 21% and authorities in both cities have

responded by raising the minimum deposit required for some buyers.

Will be cooling measures have any effect? I asked the head of research

in China for the real estate firm why prices have been rising despite

the slowdown in the economy. In a study last year we saw the

returning of the speculators coming into the market. Because prices went

up too quickly it was a problem. Prices went up by even 20% or 50% in

the past 12 months. New policies are needed. Will these policies have any

affect? The immediate effect will be on the transaction volume, which

will decline substantially by osmosis. On the plus side, I don't

think it will have lots of impact... It is likely to remain

stable in the coming months because there is still very strong demand.

You mentioned the government needs to increase supply, so what are they

doing to try to do this now and put more property available for people

to buy? Why didn't they see this problem coming? It is a structural

problem, it's very difficult to increase supply in a short period.

What the Chinese government is doing is to increase supply of smaller

units. For example the more projects they can build the more units they

can have per square metre. While property is the focus of

regulators in China, they are also tightening their grip on the

insurance sector in a bid to shield it from recent stock volatility on

domestic markets. The insurance industry holds a big chunk of

investments and savings from millions of Chinese people, and our

Asia business correspondent spoke with the group CEO of AIA, one

China's biggest foreign insurers, she asked about the effect of the

slowdown on his business. The slowing growth is the

transitioning of the economy well documented from manufacturing,

investment, to service, consumption, change of productivity factors...

These are and this will be a transition that is a multi-year

transition, it will take time to go into effect and in that transition

growth will slow, this is all to be expected. We still expect growth

around 6.5% going forward for the next five years. So we are still

very encouraged by what is happening. But certainly growth

slowing is no surprise to any of us, and moving from quantity to

quality as the country is doing is very important at this stage. China

has a basic insurance system, both life and pensions, but what kind of

opportunities does it present for your business? It presents immense

opportunity. I think if you look at the underlying drivers of our

business there around demographics, they're around urbanisation, around

saving rates, protection gaps, so this gap is growing significantly.

Insurance has grown at when the 1% compound since 1992, so we've seen

tremendous growth in the industry -- 21%. This gap demonstrates how much

of an opportunity there is and as you say, both on the live site, the

accident and health side, and the pensions side, the country needs the

support both on the liability and asset side, which we can play a

major role in -- life side. It's still a relatively protected market,

does that make it difficult for you to come in? In some senses it does,

we clearly are 100% owners of our business and therefore there is less

of an issue. They need to open up more, open up to private as well as

SOEs, open up to both local and international.

Let's have a quick look at the markets now, we can look at Japan's

Nikkei, it is currently lower. We have some of that Japanese economic

data I told you about earlier. Investors shrugging that of. They

are taking their cues from Wall Street, which saw a weaker close.

Japan as well saw two days of gains reversing the two week high it hit

just yesterday. The King at Australia, it is opening after a

four-day long weekend, and it is also declining taking its cues from

Wall Street -- looking at. We saw weaker economic data out of the US

as well. That's it for this edition of Asia Business Report. Thanks for

watching.