Invest

My article last week about an 87-year-old who lost £70,000 to crooks posing as Insurance giant Axa is, tragically, not even the worst example of this fraud. I’ve since heard from a woman who had her retirement savings of £100,000 stolen by an Axa clone. The investor is an NHS worker in her 60s I’ll just identify as Joy. She looked online for investment options and came across the website searchukbonds.com, pushed to the top of search results by Google Ads . That was on December 1 last year, several days after the Financial Conduct Authority had been alerted to this website by consumer finance campaigner Mark Taber, but nine days before it was added to the watchdog’s list of scams with the words “be especially wary of dealing with this unauthorised firm”. With no official warning to alert her, Joy gave her details to searchukbonds and was contacted by callers claiming to be from Axa Investment Managers who were selling a She wasn’t to know that Axa IM does not sell … [Read more...] about NHS worker robbed of £100,000 life savings in investment scam enabled by payment company regulated by the City watchdog

But the number of deals continued to fall, almost halving from 2019 to 16, according to a report by South Korean venture fund Nextrans. Foreign investors outperformed their local counterparts with nine deals, it said. Seed funding and series A investment, the first two stages, remained dominant, accounting for 70 percent of the deals. Fintech once again led with four of the 16 deals, followed by logistics, hospitality and real estate. Vietnam is expected to grow at the fastest rate in Southeast Asia in terms of digital financial services revenues in the next five years, reaching $3.8 billion by 2025, the report said. Other sectors such as e-commerce and medtech are also expected to boom in the coming years, it added. The most notable deals in the first quarter included an investment of $2.6-million from a group of investors led by Singapore venture capital firm Jungle Ventures in electric motorbike brand Dat Bike , and a $1 million by investment fund AppWorks in … [Read more...] about Startups see investment rise by 34 pct

TOKYO -- Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc will invest up to 150 billion yen ($1.38 billion) in Vietnam’s biggest non-bank lender FE Credit, a spokesman said on Wednesday, as part of a strategy to look beyond a slow-growing domestic market. SMFG, Japan’s second biggest lender by assets, said in a statement its consumer finance unit would acquire a 49% stake in FE Credit. The Vietnamese firm’s valuation was $2.8 billion, its parent company said in a separate statement. The deal, which was reported by the Nikkei newspaper earlier, comes as SMFG has sought to expand its business in Southeast Asia, given the ultra-low rate environment and shrinking population at home. Jun Ohta, chief executive of SMFG, previously told Reuters the bank was looking to expand its business in markets including Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and India. FE Credit, a major consumer finance firm in Vietnam, has over 13,000 points of sales nationwide and provides financial solutions through … [Read more...] about Japan’s SMFG to invest up to 150 bln yen in Vietnam’s FE Credit

Listed SM Investments Corp. said it maintains “cautious optimism” but highlights the company’s readiness to begin with its planned expansions once restrictions are eased. “We maintain cautious optimism as we navigate through many uncertainties but when we can move with flexibility and less restrictions, we would proceed with the expansions in the pipeline,” SM President and Chief Executive Officer Frederic DyBuncio said during the company’s stockholders’ meeting on Wednesday. DyBuncio added that SM would continue to adapt to the changing needs of its customers and would continue to pursue innovation. In a separate statement, SM said it developed new retail delivery channels, widened its product range online through its e-commerce sites and introduced its call-to-deliver service amid the pandemic. Meanwhile, DyBuncio said to help with overall recovery efforts, SM will rollout its vaccination to their employees within the year once supply is available. “We will [also] continue … [Read more...] about SM Investments ready to expand anew

JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/ANN): Newly appointed Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia has pledged to boost investment and spread it out across the archipelago by cutting red tape and regulating big businesses as the government seeks to revive the economy. Following his inauguration on Wednesday (April 28), Bahlil said that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had ordered the newly established ministry to, essentially, implement the Job Creation Law in attracting domestic and foreign investment. He said the ministry would promote investment in areas outside Java, simplify the permit procedures for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and “mate” big businesses with MSMEs to foster economic growth on top of carrying out other red tape-cutting measures stipulated in the jobs law. “The President, noting the Job Creation Law, told us that holding back someone’s permit is like holding back the national economy, employment rates, state revenue and our ease-of-doing-business ranking, ” he … [Read more...] about New Indonesian minister pledges to cut red tape, boost investment