20/09/2016 Asia Business Report

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

Welcome to Asia Business Report. South Korea's giant family-owned

conglomerates once again in hot water. Let's take a look at this

man. This is the chairman of Lotte. He will be summoned in a few hours

by prosecutors who have been looking into bribery allegations against

South Korea's largest retailer. It is not the first to be investigated

by authorities in recent years. Earlier, a consultant in Sol Davis

more details. It really starts with the succession crisis. -- in Seoul

gave us more. The two brothers, the younger brother, he is 60 and his

father is in his 90s. The founder of the group. The two brothers were

struggling for control in the event of the father no longer being

competent to run the group. This became a very public fight when the

younger brother won control of the South Korean part of the group.

Originally, Lotte started in Japan, although it is Korean, but gradually

the Korean side has gotten more and more powerful. So having control of

the group, the older brother then tried to manipulate the fact that in

the end the group is controlled by some obscure companies in Japan. So

the fight was a public fight continued over several months. So

naturally the authorities got very interested in many respects. It is

interesting that the authorities have gotten interested. We know it

Lotte is the biggest retailer, huge department stores all over Sol. The

fact that this seems to be the government going after people who

have their hands in every part of South Korea's economy. What impact

might this have on South Korea? Lotte is not unique. Over the course

of the 21st-century, about 14 have been investigated, about one per

year, and sometimes investigated twice. So it is pretty well half of

the course but the authorities are always watching what the chairman at

doing, looking for embezzlement and other things -- what the chairman

are doing. That is what they are doing when they investigate. In

other business days, Unilever is buying an American company that

makes environmentally friendly home personal care goods. The consumer

goods giant is essentially taking over seven generation, which makes

items like recycled paper tissue and temperance. Report said the deal was

worth between 800 million and $1 billion. Barack Obama has asked

China to speed up its efforts to address industrial capacity. He

called for China to develop a level playing field for all companies and

to advance an orderly transition to a market determined exchange rate.

President Obama made the comments when he meet -- when he met with the

Premier Li Keqiang. Russian President Putin has tightened his

grip on power following the parliamentary elections. When it

comes to the economy, it is a dire situation. According to the World

Bank, its economy has shrunk from just over $2.2 trillion in 2013 to

1.3 tree in dollars in 2015. That is a 14% drop -- $1.3 trillion. The

finance ministry warned that it is fast running out of rainyday fund.

Earlier, our correspondent from the Asia business union asked if they

were concerned. It is one thing about Russians and the Russian

country in general, after the Second World War, and a country facing

strong difficulties and external threats, most people start to

mobilise a lot. Nobody is saying what things will happen, but we are

being forced to go from being commodities based in the economy to

more efficiency. So now the country and political leaders understand

very well that they have to do everything very efficiently, and

also innovations, or to my station, and other things that can really

rise up the economy -- or to my session. When you say they have to

do things efficiently, what will they do with those two interlinked

reserves? I cannot give you the exact plan of action -- with those

dwindling reserves. The economy is falling, and it is quite bad. But

when we are speaking about the external and global threat, it is

like Christmas sale. Every 50%. Because of the sanctions that have

been placed on Russia by the Western economies, is Russia now having to

look increasingly to Asia? How's that relationship looking? Well, it

is exactly what we are working for. It is one of the main things we are

targeting out. Russia is a big country and half Europe and have

Asia. -- half Asia. When the western part makes sanctions towards us, we

are looking forward to more partnership with China, India, and

south-east Asian countries like Vietnam, Singapore and Cambodia.

Let's turn now to the tech sector. Go pro is set to debut new products

including a drone that may make or break the company. After going

public in mid-2014, its share price has tumbled, 790% of its valuation.

The company has faced increased connotation and struggled to come up

with a new key product -- bruising 90%. It is not unusual to hear of

firms facing an uphill battle with expansion, part of the e-commerce

landscape which is considered to be in its infancy. One business in

Thailand is helping companies reach their customers faster. We are told

more about this start-up success. E-commerce is an end to end

e-commerce solutions provider. It means any, is anywhere any time --

A-commerce. It is not just the consumer, it is as Mrs, governments,

and how do people transact online. -- it is businesses. We focused on

Thailand first, and how can we help take a brand and help them connect

with their end consumer. We were building the website, the e-commerce

site for them, their marketing strategy, fulfilment, warehousing,

and all of their deliveries. 23 years back, it will take over 14

days to deliver a package in Southeast Asia. Our vision was to

fix that. But we knew that once we were on this mission to fix

e-commerce and the infrastructure, we knew we had to fix not only the

payment gateways, the delivery, all the way up to marketing and content

and advertising. We saw the opportunity to fix what we call in

to end as incredibly important. The reason why aCommerce will do any

e-commerce that existed online. We are setting up fulfilment centres,

delivery fleet, and for us, we have over 100 people in basically our

development hub in Angkor, where we are building the platform to scale

across the region -- Angkor. We are spread across Thailand, Indonesia,

the Philippines and now just setting up Singapore. We are a cross for

different markets. We have been cash positive in Thailand a couple of

times this year, and in Indonesia as well once. Each market has its own

dynamics, but we like Thailand because it really sets a great

testing land for what a real model for a market would be like in

Indonesia. For us as a company, we want to be able to provide a sickly

a platform for an operating system to help brands likely be able to

sell across all different forms of e-commerce across the region --

basically a platform. The study's stock exchange will be

in focus today after suffering its worst and you disruption in at least

five years -- Australia. It was forced open late and shot early due

to a highway great. It happened two months into the new CEO's tenure,

who has apologised for the outage. Let's take a look the markets.

Japan's Nikkei has opened lower after a public holiday on Monday.

That is essentially due to a slightly stronger yen. We are seeing

Australia functioning today, down slightly as well. That is it for

today's Asia Business Report. Thank you for watching.

A man suspected of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey has been