The Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of Hong Kong, Mr Hui Ching-yu, said that from June 2021 to the end of March 2024, the Investment Promotion Department's family office team received more than 650 enquiries about setting up family offices in Hong Kong, mainly from the Mainland, ASEAN countries, the Middle East, Europe and America.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange announced on April 24 that the average daily turnover of the spot market in the first quarter of this year was HK$99.4 billion, down 22% year on year and up 9% month on month. According to the Group, the average daily turnover in March and April has clearly rebounded, and since March, the average daily turnover has rebounded to the level of HK$100 billion.

We learned from various sources that Xijiu recently suspended the supply of products to some dealers in the second quarter because the inventory rate of these dealers is higher than the red line. Some wine merchants believe that Xi Jiu's move is aimed at controlling goods and raising prices during the off-season, which is the manufacturer's market strategy. Currently, the wholesale reference price for Junpin Xijiu (53 degrees, 500ml), one of Xi Jiu's main products, is about 800 yuan/bottle, while the dealer's price is 919 yuan/bottle, which is in an inverted state.

On April 23, based on Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi Big Model and the BaiLian Platform, Changan Automobile is developing a large automobile vertical model using cockpit interaction as the application core to provide users with a better product experience by combining common automotive text corpus and business corpus. According to reports, this innovative interactive application may be installed on Changan's upcoming Qiyuan E07 in 2024. The car will use the latest SDA platform architecture and is the “world's first mass-produced new variable car” launched by Changan. Furthermore, in R&D scenarios, Changan Automobile has used Tongyi Spirit Code to help R&D programmers improve development efficiency.

Bank of China International released a report stating that Wanzhou's fundamentals improved in the first quarter, showing resilience, and net profit increased 140% year-on-year to US$465 million. Although the Chinese business continues to be dragged down by low pig prices, the US business is showing strong signs of “turning over”. The bank believes this supports this year's overall profit, and considering last year's low base, it is expected that this year's year-on-year growth figures will also be strong. Furthermore, the bank believes that since Wanzhou is still considering a spin-off of the Smithfield business, improvements in its US business will help reassess Wanzhou's valuation. The bank maintained a “buy” rating for Wan Chau. The target price was raised from HK$5.8 to HK$6.5, which is equivalent to 9 times the predicted price-earnings ratio for this year.

Furifance, a skincare brand owned by Japan's Kao Group, said on its official website that the brand will undergo a comprehensive update and that the brand positioning will change from sensitive skin care to a clean and beauty brand to promote the concept of sustainable beauty. Due to brand updates, sales of Japanese products will be discontinued after the current inventory runs out. In response to the future situation of Frifense China, Kao China responded that due to the impact of the epidemic in recent years and changes in consumer shopping habits, the brand's sales strategy layout in the global market has been adjusted. Since the brand was fully upgraded and refreshed in April of last year, Frifense has strategically skewed the Chinese market by paying more attention to the actual needs of Chinese consumers, while the Japanese market will pursue a business model that is more suitable for the continuous development of the brand. In the future, Japan will mainly shift to an online sales model.

On April 24, at the Huawei Smart Car Solution Conference, Jin Yuzhi, CEO of Huawei Smart Car Solution BU, revealed that since the establishment of the Huawei Smart Car Solution BU in 2019, the total R&D investment has exceeded 30 billion yuan, with 7,000 R&D personnel. Jin Yuzhi said that Huawei's smart car solution business is currently in a period of rapid growth. In 2023, more than 3 million smart components have been shipped, 7 strategic cooperation models have been launched, and more than 300 upstream and downstream partners in the industrial chain have been developed. “Huawei is committed to becoming a supplier of incremental components for intelligent connected vehicles to help car companies build good cars.”

The reporter learned from the Zhongguancun Energy Storage Industry Technology Alliance (“CNESA”) that investment in lithium battery manufacturing has cooled down. According to incomplete statistics from CNESA's global energy storage database, in March 2024, a total of 26 companies across the country disclosed battery project plans. The total production capacity exceeded 233.53GWh (including planning/contract/starting/commissioning, etc.), and the investment amount exceeded 98.716 billion yuan, a decrease of 4.68% over the previous month. According to CNESA data, the total production capacity of energy storage batteries reached 92.98 GWH, a year-on-month decrease of 47.64%. The technical route involves lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, and flow batteries. Among them, investment in lithium-ion batteries has cooled down. (Shell Finance)

The reporter learned from Midea Real Estate that in order to further adapt to industry trends and actively promote corporate transformation, Midea Real Estate Group added the position of executive president (Wang Dazai, the former regional general manager of Midea Real Estate) to assist the president to focus on the group's daily operations and transactional work. Hao Hengle is still the chairman of the board of directors and group president of the listed company. There has been no change. He is fully responsible for the company's strategic planning and control of important matters, and focuses on the company's strategic transformation and new business channels, seeking new growth poles for the group, and building a more effective and strong environmental guarantee for business development and achievement of business goals. (e company)

According to Guangdong Statistical Information Network, in the first quarter, the province invested 0.25 trillion yuan in real estate development, down 13.2% year on year, and the decline was 0.4 percentage points narrower than in January-February. Among them, commercial residential investment declined by 16.8%, while completed investment in office buildings and commercial housing increased by 8.5% and 4.1%, respectively. Looking at the subregion, real estate investment in the Pearl River Delta region declined by 11.1%; in total, real estate investment in eastern Guangdong, western Guangdong, and northern Guangdong declined by 23.8%. In the first quarter, the sales area of commercial housing in the province decreased by 34.6% year on year.