19/10/2016 Asia Business Report

The health check on China - is it finally checking out by the slump?

The chair of an influential conglomerate could face charges

along with his father and brother. Good morning. All eyes will be on

the latest economic figures from China for the first half of this

year, growth remained at 6.7% stop it is in fact the slowest rate of

growth since 2009, which is, of course, just after the global

financial crisis. What can we expect with concerns to a potential

property bubble? A senior economist gave us his view. We are expecting

growth to hold steady. We are looking for a pickup in industrial

activity that is going to offset slightly slower growth in the

services and a lot of that is because they grew quite rapidly in

the third quarter of last year. We talked a lot about China's

ballooning debt and possible acid rubble, are you still concerned?

Those long-term vulnerabilities are still there but the new term risks

are the hard landing in China. Interest rates are low around the

world, negative in the end in Japan, the draw reserve, is likely to hike

rates by the end of this year. Interest rates hikes in the US will

be gradual so we do not see much catalyst for other nation crisis in

China stop Donald Trump has repeatedly accused China of

manipulating the US. What is your outlook on the currency? China has

been persistently spending to manage its currency and that is a sign

that, under the free float, the currency would be weaker than it is

today. We expected the current exchange rate stays in place and we

are likely to get to around 6.9 per US dollar baby end of the year and

7.1 by the end of next. Goldman Sachs has reported a sharp rise in

revenues of nearly 20% of the third quarter of this year. Profits came

in at over $2 billion. Largely thanks to better returns from its

trading activity. It has access about 5% of its workforce including

here in Asia, to cut costs. The big struggle for investment banks

globally is a change in gameplan. They can no longer be involved in

the whole spectrum of investment banking so an the latest results,

equities has not shot up very much. In fact, it is a burden on the

business so it has to focus on businesses that are more consistent

and derive more consistent revenue over a period of time. Investment

banking itself is involving the players who can only do the bigger

deals while at the bottom end it has become very fragmented and it is no

longer worth their time to build and to end investment banking interest.

Shares in Yahoo! Have risen by more than 1% after the company posted

better than expected quarterly results. Revenue from its Mobile,

video and social advertising unit jumped 24% to $524 million was not

in a positive sign it seems customers have left the company

after huge private data breaches. It is continuing to prepare for

acquisition by. Leonardo DiCaprio has commented after a civil suit

against a real estate case. He says he is awaiting direction over any

funds that may have supported his environmental foundation or his

film, the walls of Wall Street. A self driving taxi company has had

its first accident. This is one of the vehicles operated by the firm

which has been given free rides to invited guests in a small part of

Singapore since August. One of its taxes click a lorry but the company

is playing incident -- playing down this incident. Corruption charges

against the chairman of one of countries most influential

conglomerate. He together with his father and brother committed

offences worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This centres on the

patriarchy, the guy who funded the company in Japan after the war and

who then took it to Korea and his son who is the current chairman of

the company. This huge vast conglomerate and the allegation is

that many hundreds of millions of dollars has been switched between

each of the company and sometimes secretly and bits of tax,

substantial hits of tax, I have to say, are not being paid. So it is a

very typical alleged scandal where the line between what the family on

and what the company on seems to be very, very vague stop this is an

absolutely vast company. Not an household name outside Japan and

Korea but these people are some of the riches in the world. In Korea it

is the fifth biggest chaebol, its construction, finance, department

stores and it all started from the party who is now 93, selling chewing

gum in Japan. -- partly up. Then expanding their business to Korea.

In all centres on this group around the patriarch at the top. More

people are travelling than ever before spurring growth of 40% in

Asia-Pacific online travel sectors with a record $79 billion in sales.

One of the company is hoping to capitalise on that growth is the

travel site cardiac. I spoke to the co-founder and started by asking him

why it took the firm in nearly a decade to expand into Asia? We now

operate in 12 different countries here and the reason why it we took

so long to get here is... When they see what they want to buy, we give

choice as to where to book. It is just hard to do. It has taken us a

while to get here. Popularity aside, monetising it is crucial. How are

you doing financially? We are doing great. We have a team in Hong Kong

of seven people, which sounds small but they are a very talented team.

They secured commercial contracts with hotels, et cetera. We get a

small percentage of the small transaction. What about your

marketing strategy? How do you spread the word about your company

when there are so many other players? It takes time. There is

different ways of doing it. When you use Kayak, most consumers will use

multiple websites we just want them to visit Kayak is one of those. You

expect the travel industry to continue growing or are we seeing a

slowdown because of the economic issues? It is absolutely great. It

will be the largest travel market in the world next year 's top if they

have more disposable income what people like to do with that is

travel. The category is growing by four percentage points faster. You

are as cereals entrepreneur and predict big changes? We have been

making investment. There is in Kayak we have created, for example social

services within the Internet. You can, for example ask questions and

get an intelligent response back. A quick look at markets before we

go... One share of what to mention... After the Nick Eade

newspaper. -- Indonesia's President tells BBC

World his country will go ahead with the use of chemical castration

for some sex crimes. The US military says "Islamic State"

militants fighting Iraqi troops