Hong Kong

Standard Chartered reported that its income growth leveled up with cost growth in the first half of this year as its austerity policy helped it evade more than a year of expenses outpacing profit.

The bank expected profit before tax to rise by a double-digit figure in the first half of the year, helped by strong growth in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, China and Indonesia, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

In a move to cut costs the bank decreased its workforce in the region.
 

Goldman Sachs is planning to launch a new hedge fund in Hong Kong. The company trading desk head Morgan Sze is setting up a 20-30 member team to start the business that is expected to raise more than $1 billion according to people familiar with the case.

The start-up hedge fund is expected to be one of the largest in Asia with the offices planned to take space in Hong Kong's ICBC Tower. The fund will start operating in the first quarter of 2011, two people familiar with the matter said.

Talking at the opening of the Information Security Summit 2010, Agnes Mak, executive director of the Hong Kong Productivity Council, said that organizations in Hong Kong need more consolidated efforts and collaboration to wrestle security threats. Last week the Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre (HKCERT) reported that the number of hacking and phishing cases were up 34 percent year-on-year in the first 10 months of the year.

In a standard move to get out financial trouble a Hong Kong monitor manufacturer decided to sue Apple over alleged patents infringement. As reported by The People’s Daily, Proview International registered the iPad trademark outside of China in 2000. One division of the company, Proview Taipei, failed in its attempt to market an iPad computer, and sold the rights to the trademark to Apple.

Hong Kong stocks shed 578.04 points, or 2.59 percent, to close at 21,748.60 on Wednesday after China's central bank raised bank reserve ratio requirements after the market close the previous day.
The Hong Kong market was also dragged by overnight losses on the United States markets. The benchmark Hang Seng Index opened down 1.42 percent and widened its losses to 2.24 percent by lunch break, and further to 2.59 percent by market close.
Turnover totaled 97.62 billion HK dollars (12.52 billion U.S. dollars), one of the highest in recent months.

 According to the latest report of McAfee Cameroon (.cm) web domains were found to be the largest suppliers of malware having replaced Hong Kong. According to the research over 36.7% of domains registered in the West African country hosted viruses or malicious code.

McAfee explains the trend as a result of a misspelling. The security research group says that the .cm used by Cameroon is a common typo for .com and this fact was exploited by cybercriminals to set up fake typo-squatting sites that lead to malicious downloads or spyware under the country's domain.

Financial crisis, affected the world community, caused the growth of many national economies’ external debt as the necessity to turn to their government and foreign lenders for getting financial support arises. Thus, countries’ economies have to face with increased spending, borrowing and in most cases, growing national debt. 

 Deficit spending, government debt and private sector borrowing are the norm in most western countries, but due in part to the financial crisis, some nations and economies are in considerably worse debt positions than others.

Asian stocks fell, led by banks and Japanese automakers, amid capital-raising concerns and as the dollar slumped to a 14-year low against the yen.
Bank of China Ltd. which was looking for options for replenishing capital, dropped 2.9 percent in Hong Kong. Asahi Glass Co. slumped 7.9 percent on plans to sell convertible bonds. investment group PT Bakrie & Brothers, which said two days ago it will sell bonds, slid 8 percent in Jakarta. Honda Motor Co. fall down 1.1 percent on concern the stronger yen will hurt the value of U.S. revenue.

Asian stocks fell, led by banks and Japanese automakers, amid capital-raising concerns and as the dollar slumped to a 14-year low against the yen.
Bank of China Ltd. which was looking for options for replenishing capital, dropped 2.9 percent in Hong Kong. Asahi Glass Co. slumped 7.9 percent on plans to sell convertible bonds. investment group PT Bakrie & Brothers, which said two days ago it will sell bonds, slid 8 percent in Jakarta. Honda Motor Co. fall down 1.1 percent on concern the stronger yen will hurt the value of U.S. revenue.

China Mobile, the world's top mobile carrier by subscribers, reported its call traffic has rose back to pre-global downturn levels owing to a recovering economy.
After dropping during the crisis, China Mobile's international business has now returned to normal levels, according to the statement of Chairman Wang Jianzhou made at an event in the southern Chinese city Shenzhen.
A return of migrant workers to big cities, following their mass departures as work dried up during the downturn, also playing its role in driving calling traffic, he added.

 A mobile payment system Fortumo announced its expansion into Hong Kong thus making its mobile payment network cover more Chinese speaking markets in Asia including China, Malaysia and Taiwan.

“We hope our growing network will act as the express gateway to Asia for people in the creative industry around the globe,” says Pohan Chang, Head of Asia in Fortumo. "We started with a single market a year ago in Asia and now it has flourished as an extensive network enabling easy-access to this milky land of virtual business," adds Chang. 

Mobile Money Ventures (MMV) Thursday unveiled it has deployed the first mobile US stock trading feature in Hong Kong in collaboration with Citibank.

 Last October these two companies started rolling it out on the successful mobile platform, providing Citibank`s customers in Hong Kong with the ability to trade on both the Hong Kong and American markets, including the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. 

The name of the country we are to talk about today is translated to English as "fragrant harbour". This romantic name originally described a small inlet (Little Hong Kong today) between the island of Ap Lei Chau and the south side of the island which later became known as Hong Kong. Officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is a largely self-governing territory of the People's