05/12/2017 Asia Business Report

date.

Now on BBC News all the latest

business news live from Singapore.

The divorce proceedings within the

European Union and Britain breakdown

in Brussels. And from Korean pop to

Australian marriage equality,

Twitter talks about the biggest

trending moments in 2017. Good

morning Asia, hello, world. Thank

you for joining us for another

exciting addition of Asia Business

Report. This morning will be

watching the pound very closely in

Asian trade after Brexit talks broke

down in the final was hour of

negotiations. The dispute over the

status of the Irish border has

turned out to be a major sticking

point. Theresa May broke off talks

after the main party in the northern

Ireland, the DUP, said it would not

support a deal which gave

significant concessions to the Irish

Republic. Earlier I spoke to the

former state secretary of Denmark if

the deal could be salvaged.

Theresa

May has violated the fundamental

principle. Before you negotiate, you

should set to your home base.

Instead of doing so, she has struck

a deal and then was overruled by

political forces at home, in a

humiliating way. That could haunt

her to the rest of the negotiations.

A second observation is that we now

know that the EU and Britain can

strike a deal. That means that the

focus of negotiations this shift is

to inside Westminster Parliament

with the Tory party and the DUP.

Justin Trudeau was scheduled to meet

with President Xi Jinping later

today. And met with the Premier of

China yesterday but the two sides

were not able to announce the start

of formal trade talks as was

expected. My colleague has been

keeping an eye on the visit. What

has happened?

They delayed the start

of the free trade agreement talks

which had hints of that... They had

been talking about it. There is some

disappointed and there. The

Canadians say they seek a

progressive trade agreement that

will include issues such as labour

reform finesse, the environment and

gender issues. They were able to

agree on three things, however,

including an action plan on energy

cooperation. It also included a

memorandum of understanding about

food products and a Canadian

initiative. Relations between the

two are important. The Canadians are

seeking more bilateral relations

elsewhere, trying to diversify away

from the US because we know that the

talks about revamping the NAFTA

trade agreement have stalled. Trade

between the two is large. China is

the second-largest trading partner

with Canada. They have bilateral

trading over $70 billion. Justin

Trudeau is fairly popular in China.

A little trivia, in fact he is known

in China as little potato because

his name, Trudeau, sounds at the

Mandarin word for potato. His

father, who established diplomatic

relations with China, is known as

potato.

Congratulations as well for

winning an award as the best

presenter at the Asian television

awards. Turning out to disrupt a

series. We are looking at how

technology is changing the banking

industry. In India, the government

is pushing for a digital future. A

software start-up has come up with a

way to make it easier for the

businesses in India to accept many

different forms of business.

We

wanted to use mobile phones and

small computers we build in house to

get merchants across the country to

accept digital currency. But as we

evolve, we realise that was not

where the opportunity was. Mobil

applications were changing

everything. The founders of easy

tap, we have all been entrepreneurs,

we have all come up through Silicon

Valley and now we're back in India

trying to do something. We also

looked around and saw financial

services was the big idea. This is a

software part art form that allows

all payments to be handled through a

single interface and application. --

software platform.

We need to accept cards but here we

have wallets. We have a new

government system that allows us to

transfer money from place to place

at the low-cost. You have biometric,

you have cure codes. The complexity

of digital payments in India is

massive -- you have cure codes.

They will use a mobile application

to verify who the person is and make

sure the correct deal is happening.

At the end they will accept any form

of digital payment. In one project,

a whole swathes of the Indian

community is becoming digitised.

Were taking software, digital

payment and baking and bringing

together at a scale and speed never

seen before anywhere in the world.

These projects will come in the

course of the next few months, will

affect many people.

That scale is disruptive by sheer

size.

It has been a huge year for

Twitter. They will regularly in the

headlines thanks to Donald Trump.

When it comes to the Asia-Pacific

region, that hash tag #Maga was not

a popular. Instead we saw Miss

universe again thrones and -- game

of thrones take off. In India it was

a Tamil film and in Australia it was

issues around same-sex marriage

equality. Earlier I spoke to Twitter

Asia-Pacific and asked her what

surprised about the findings for

2017.

South Korea was the most

interesting top hash tag with 2017

MAMA. They are the annual K-pop

award is happening across three

cities in Asia. Not only did it find

resonance among the South Koreans,

we saw 42 million tweets around that

hash tag globally. An instance of a

trend from Asia that went viral

globally.

Did Donald Trump's tweets

have any resonance here in Asian,

considering major issue such as

North Korea?

There are many things

going on in the world at the moment.

But the number of hash tags tells

you what is top of mind and what

attracts millennial. K-pop and other

things like elections have been top

of mind this year.

A lot of

localised tweets have really made

the trending popular around the

Asia-Pacific region.

An interesting

story to tell because what counts

for millennial is in the region is

what happens around them. Take this

Tamil film. A great story emerging

that Indian movie fans are

diversifying their interest from

Bollywood to South Indian cinema. A

consistent trend we saw in 2017.

Who

are some of the biggest

personalities here in the

Asia-Pacific region? I pale in

comparison. I only have 360,000

followers. But who are the biggest

characters?

That is very impressive.

I will tell you a few people beat

you to it this year. Indian and

Indonesian personalities trumped

everyone else in Asia-Pacific. By

Minister Modi and President Jokowi

had the most followers.

That was Twitter Asia-Pacific. A

mixed finish on the markets.

Thank you so much for investing time

with us. Sport Today