12/01/2018 Asia Business Report

of staff.

Now on BBC News all the latest

business news live from Singapore.

The world's biggest retailer Walmart

offers a pay hike just before laying

off hundreds of workers.

Is the bubble bursting? Bitcoin

falls as South Korea plans are

trading ban. Good morning, Asia,

hello, world. Glad you could join us

for Asia Business Report. Starting

with Walmart and mixed messages from

the world's biggest retailer. It was

initially good news for President

Trump when he said he would give

more than 1 million staff a pay rise

thanks to his tax reform Bill. Wages

would be increased from $10 an hour

to $11 and there would also be a

1-off bonus of $1000 for staff who

have been at the company for more

than 20 years. But shortly after the

announcement it was revealed that

the firm is shutting down dozens of

its wholesale shops and laying off

hundreds of workers. Puppies as

reporter in New York said other

companies have offered similar

things.

We've heard it from

airlines, and other companies. This

is a permanent sort of reduction in

corporate tax that has been brought

on by the new bill. It will mean

billions of dollars and in some

cases it could be tens of billions

of dollars over the course of the

future. The amount they are paying

their employees today amounts to

about $400 million and the

Republican pitch was that this money

would come back into the economy in

the way that it expands the economy

here. So it will create jobs and

people's wages would go up in a

significant way. If that happens

then you could sort of see the

government then earning more by way

of tax. But there are no

indications, apart from this

particular bonus that is being

given, and the only wage increase in

the US where that's the amount it

increases by is actually the minimum

wage and there are competitors in

the market who are already paying

more than that amount. So we could

just be competition that has forced

them to increase these wages.

Our

reporter in New York. If you are

regretting not buying Bitcoin when

it was cheaper, think again. It has

fallen by as much as 14% after South

Korea said it was planning to ban

the currency and other crypto

currency. I asked if the hype was

over.

I think the bar has already --

always been set higher, and even

more so given this regulatory

oversight, especially with this

latest announcement by Korea. It

could spread to other local markets

and the fear is that if there is

further you regular tree oversight

this could really dampen investor

sentiment towards coins in general.

There is already this growing trend

amongst Asian governments to tighten

controls on not only Bitcoin but

other Bitcoin currencies, so the

likes of China and Vietnam?

I think

that all oil down to the

unsophisticated traders. They feel

they have to put some defensive

mechanism in the markets to control

this volatility because a lot of

people stand to lose a lot of money

if the boy naturally does crash.

And

on the flipside there are more

companies now getting into the

technology that underpins crypto

currencies and the Bitcoin, like

Kodak.

The thing they will succeed?

I think there's a practical use for

blockchain technology as the go

through the next decade and I think

consumers are actually seeing value

in this. If we look at how

technology launched itself over the

last two decades, this does bode

well and we could see Bitcoin

technology advance.

Over the oil and

the price of crude oil as -- has hit

$70 a barrel for the first time in

over three years. You can see this

chart shows it moving north,

gradually climbing over the past

year. At today's followed the

announcement of the oil producing

giant OPEC, that he would continue

to limit supplies. This news just

in. Intel has asked some of its

customers to hold off installing

patches that would address security

flaws, according to the Wall Street

Journal. The company confirmed last

week that the chip used in our

computers could allow hackers to

steal sensitive information. In

social media Facebook says it will

change the newsfeed ranking over the

next few months. Chief executive

Mark Zuckerberg said it would

emphasise meaningful social

interactions within UN gill friends,

rather than the type of newsfeed

that critics say is addictive. China

is waking up just now and let's

check in with the team in India

about the latest business story. The

security regulator has banned a

global accounting firm from auditing

listed companies in the country for

two years, and to tell us more about

this latest development I'm joined

by my colleague in Delhi. Please

explain to us what happened. Why

have they been suspended?

Let's

rewind the clock to 2009. It was in

January when the founder of the then

leading company had in a letter

confessed to fobbing the accounts of

the firm. It came to about $2

billion fraud and that's when the

market regulator in India was

entrusted with the responsibility to

probe the matter and whether the

auditing firm was complicit in this

as well. Price water Cooper was at

that time the accounting firm from

2000 until 2008. --

PricewaterhouseCoopers. The market

regulator said

PricewaterhouseCoopers was complicit

in the fraud. They were able to

establish that. Also the statement

from Pricewaterhouse is denying any

wrongdoing and they are looking at

this stage from Indian quote on the

sword.

Thank you for updating us.

For centuries the world's wealthy

have tried to help tackle the

problems of poverty and income

inequality, but to some experts the

traditional philanthropy model is no

longer suited to 21st-century

realities. I spoke to someone from

the Rockefeller foundation which

disperses millions of dollars year

and he told me what the foundation

looks for when it comes to helping

those in need.

What I care a lot

about is what it costs to move a

family out of poverty, what it costs

to save a child's life under the age

of five who might die of diarrhoea.

We know we can do that for 10- $15.

For a few hundred dollars we can

move the family out of poverty. Give

them a job that allows them to use

their own ingenuity to build a

brighter future. That's the ratio of

the return on investment that I care

about.

What is the current state of

philanthropy in Asia, regarding the

West?

There are more than 100,000

foundations in the US. The

Rockefeller foundation has been

around for 104 years. In Asia there

are 10,000 foundations. Part of the

purpose of expanding our

philanthropic projects, we are

measuring and knowing the impact,

ensuring money is free of

corruption, for those types of

families we think there is a

tremendous potential as wealth and

dynamism in Asia continues to

explode. We want to work with the

next generation of Asian

philanthropists to change the world.

Did you know that is, look at that

happy face, the first nonstick

frying pan was called the happy pan?

It made washing up so easy and

Teflon was the miracle chemical

behind it. It made billions of

dollars over five decades. There is

another side to its history.

It is Teflon! The stuff that makes

your frying pans nonstick. So, how

was it discovered? It was discovered

by accident in 1938 in the labs. An

engineer was looking at TFE, the

stuff that kept our refrigerators

cool. He installed it in canisters.

One day he went to get some and

found the gas had turned into some

strange dry flakes. He found the

mystery stuff incredibly slippery,

so he worked on it and came up with

a chemical called Teflon. In 1961

the first Teflon frying pan was sold

in America and it was called the

Happy Pan because it made washing up

so easy. Now it makes $1 billion

seafront Teflon and spin-offs. But

Teflon used to contain a chemical

called PFOA, which is linked to

cancer and other diseases. Last year

Teflon had to pay hundreds of

millions of dollars to thousands of

people after that chemical leaked

from this American factory and

that's a sad legacy for the

so-called happy pan.

Thank you so much for investing your

time with us.

I'm Rico Hizon.

Sport Today is up next.