30/10/2017 Asia Business Report

from sexual harassment.

Now on BBC News all the latest

business news live from Singapore.

New leadership of the US Central

Bank. Who will take on the top job

when Janet Yellen's term ends in

February? And one start-up is

putting a twist on prefab compact

homes by adding a designer touch.

Good morning, Asia. Hello, world.

Glad you could join us. Hope you had

a great weekend. We start in the US

and the chance is President Donald

Trump will reappoint -- the chances

of Donald Trump reappointing Janet

Yellen are looking slim. The

commander-in-chief is looking for a

replacement. We take a look at the

front-runners.

Don't expect presidential level

political campaigning. The decision

on becomes who is the next bed

share. Who is in the running? Status

quo is the easiest thing to do. Keep

Janet Yellen in the post. But she

has disagreed with the President on

rolling back banking rules after the

financial crisis. Then there is Eric

Kohn, the head of the president's

National Economic Council. But their

relationship went south after he

disagreed with President from's

reaction to the violence in

Charlottesville. John Taylor is a

Stanford economist and always on the

Republican list of potential Federal

Reserve chairs but never gets the

job. But markets might have a

complete freak out. He is a Hawk who

thinks interest rates should be much

higher despite lower inflation.

Girard Powell is a Republican,

current member of the board with

private sector experience but he has

voted in favour of post financial

crisis rules that the President

wants to roll back. And then there

is Kevin Warsh. He has been on the

board for a decade but may want to

see interest rates go up faster and

he was wrong about the risks of high

inflation would have fared's

accommodative monetary policy.

Whoever gets tapped will have a

tough job ahead, steering the

American economy of historic low

interest rates without sinking the

recovery.

Shares of Kobe Steel have pushed

higher, the third-largest steelmaker

in Japan under a cloud of

controversy after admitting to

falsifying dart on a range of

products. Will these earnings be

affected by the scandal?

We are

expecting the first half result in

about five hours from now but they

have said they can't determine what

impact this scandal will have on the

bottomline. Kobe Steel forecast a

profit for the year ending March

2018 after two successive years of

major losses. That might actually

changed now. If you look at this

chart, you will see that making

matters worse is a massive share

price lost. More than a third of its

value since the scandal broke at the

start of year, wiping out nearly $2

billion in value. Shareholders may

agitate with of the raising money to

cover possible damage down the line.

We could see Kobe Steel potentially

sell assets in the future.

Many

challenges facing Kobe Steel. Thank

you very much, Leisha Santorelli.

Remaining members of the

Trans-Pacific Partnership a meeting

from today to finalise the trade

pact. New Zealand wants to

renegotiate and the US has pulled

out. Earlier, I spoke to the chief

market strategist for active trader,

Greg McCann.

New Zealand was one of

the key countries that got everybody

back to the table after Donald Trump

left -- left but this new

left-leaning government is keen to

negotiate the outlook for property

buyers. New Zealand property prices

have gone up quite a bit and they

are looking to renegotiate that,

looking to renegotiate the RBNZ act.

I genuinely think it is an open

question as to what this government

wants.

It's early days. Flatpack or

modular homes have traditionally

been used to build low-cost housing

but one Filipino entrepreneur is

using that prefab technology to

contract -- construct luxury homes.

The company behind this is the first

start-up to have a billion-dollar

valuation as we see in this week

episode of by design.

How do you

create a massively different shade

of company that will transform the

way home building is being done?

I thought to myself, imagine serving

a group of people who would now live

in aid designer home for $100,000

US. Such a formidable concept. White

spent clothes with an amazing design

when you can't do that same thing

with the most important purchase of

your life, a home? This is a 1-

bedroom, and we can build it to

dream, 3-bedroom, three bedroom with

parking versions. It shows the

concept of modularity and

flexibility which is extremely

valuable to many. Those who want to

customise their homes.

The homes can be done anywhere from

two months to three months at least.

That is something that is massively

changing the landscape today.

The gaming industry is worth more

than 100 UN dollars globally but the

small developers, it can be a

struggle to get their companies off

the ground. How reporter Jason

McDonald spoke about the new game

Stifled.

It's this game, it fine,

I'm not scared Pete -- if you have

the microphone on comedy enemies can

get you. When you make a noise, the

pulse goes out and lights up the

wall like echolocation or sonar.

That is your resort and your tool.

There is always noise which can be

ongoing but I mustn't make too much

noise.

Global gaming is a big and

growing market. Do you have any

ambitions to have a mobile version?

Cross, it's not really about the

markets, it is about the game. At

Stifled, it doesn't make a lot of

sense for mobile. It's not

immersive. You don't want people on

the train, there is a lot of noise,

its bright. You cannot put yourself

into the game. You wanted to be

black, dark room, with some

microphone. You can truly hear what

it is. It's important for us as a

studio. We are probably not going to

do mobile.

The developers of angry

birds say that they made 50 games

before they had a hit is it fair to

say you have a long way to go?

We

are hoping to get lucky. We have

been working on this game for two

years. From our standpoint as a

team, as a studio, we try to make

our game marketable so we started

developing, before we understood

that the visual style is very

unique. The mechanics was

interesting. All those things, they

have up and create a very good

pulse. It makes the game easier to

market and stand out from the clerk

-- the crowd.

The skills are here in

Singapore but it's probably more

expensive than some other places.

How is that working out?

We have a

small team of right now. We all

graduated from school together and

basically we don't learn a lot,

sometimes we don't pay ourselves but

we are hoping to improve because we

want to make stuff that deserves to

exist and we want people to play.

The creator of Stifled speaking to

Tim McDonald. In the markets, Asia

is off to a quick start. All in

positive territory. The all

ordinaries in positive territory.

This is after the US market power to

fresh record highs following blowout

earnings from Amazon and other

giants. Thank you, goodbye