HSBC’s profit before tax rose by$ 2 billion to$ 32.3 billion for the financial year ending December 31, 2024, according to a regulatory announcement, profit after tax increased by$ 400 million to$ 25 billion. Overall revenue across the group climves from$ 66 billion to$ 66.85 billion.  ,
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HSBC’s profit before tax rose by$ 2 billion to$ 32.3 billion for the financial year ending December 31, 2024, according to a regulatory announcement, profit after tax increased by$ 400 million to$ 25 billion.
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Scott Jalowayski is rejoining Morrison Foerster as a partner in the corporate group in its Singapore office.
Jalowayski arrives from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher with over 20 years’ experience advising clients on complex international private equity and M&A transactions, and has practiced in New York, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore.
At Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Jalowayski was a founding partner of the firm’s Asia private equity practice and served most recently as co-chair of its global private equity practice group. Jalowayski previously practiced at Morrison Foerster, spending three years in the firm’s Japan office and five years in its Hong Kong office, where he made partner before leaving in May 2008.
Jalowayski advises private equity funds, their portfolio companies, and other global and regional investment managers on their investment and M&A transactions in Asia. He has experience across leveraged and unleveraged control acquisitions, minority investments, joint ventures, divestures, and restructurings, and sector, including life sciences and healthcare, interactive and digital media, and technology, alongside real asset and infrastructure enterprises, according to a media release.
“[Scott] strengthens our private equity and M&A capabilities on the ground in Singapore and brings significant, cross-industry experience to Morrison Foerster,” said Paul McKenzie Morrison Foerster mergers & acquisitions partner.
Tabitha Saw co-office managing partner, Singapore at Morrison Foerster, added: “Scott brings to the firm significant private equity and M&A credentials and core relationships in both Southeast Asia and Japan. His presence will deepen our bench in these regions and in industries that are strategic to the firm, including energy transition, renewables, technology, and digital infrastructure.”
In addition, Xiaoxi Lin has joined the firm as a partner in the corporate group based in Hong Kong, brings over 15 years’ experience to Morrison Foerster, with a private equity and M&A practice with established client relationships in the Greater China, Asia, and US markets.
Lin joins Morrison Foerster from Linklaters where he was a partner in its private equity and US public M&A practices. He previously practiced with Kirkland & Ellis and Davis Polk & Wardwell, with experience based in Hong Kong, New York, and Beijing
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On January 13, the National University of Singapore ( NUS) announced the launch of a green bond credentials tokenisation initiative, covering the university’s third green bond issuance of S$ 340 million ($ 251 million ) maturing in 2033.
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Like the’ 20s of the 21st century, the ‘ 70s of the 20th century had an prices issue. The issue persisted throughout the century, however, it worsened. That was largely due to the fact that the Federal Reserve Board head initially let himself be pushed around by the US leader.
Yesterday’s Fed seat is determined not to let that happen again. He will need all the political will and bravery he may conjure to avoid it.
Fed chair Arthur Burns was telling President Richard Nixon that lowering interest rates in an inflationary business was a blunder for the majority of 1971. For a logical, if possibly mistaken, political purpose, Dixon persisted.
For the US in the 1970s had an awkwardly large 6 % poverty level, in addition to inflation. In order for Burns to loosen monetary policy in the lead up to 1972, he felt that poverty was a greater threat to his candidacy than inflation. When Nixon suddenly threatened policy to reduce the Fed’s freedom, Burns folded.
Now the Fed’s liberation is back in the sights. Not much after appointing him in 2018, President Donald Trump began to lose patience with Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The following morning, he blasted him once more.
The president declared he would require lower interest rates during a virtual conference of the new Davos forum. He claimed that the leader should be in charge of interest rates in a campaign appearance next month. Some of his officials made plans earlier this year to increase the power of the Fed to the executive branch.
Every leader wants low interest rates, as I pointed out in a blog about those ideas last May. Fearing financial-market opposition, but, most seethe in silence when the Fed doesn’t provide them what they want. Some, Nixon most notably, try to force the Fed.
Trump is in Nixon’s station.
The issue with this is that there are instances when high interest rates provide the terrible treatment the economy requires. Without them, cpi you spin out of control, as it did in the ‘ 70s. Long-term inflation may wreck an economy.
While high interest rates don’t get public favour, neither does prices, which likely cost the Liberals the next election. But the sick effects of inflation may be felt on some other voter’s view, the politician hopes. High interest rates and the economic downturn, in the politician’s opinion, could prevent winning the upcoming election.
And that’s why Congress established a relatively independent Federal Reserve Board by taking interest-rate selections out of the control of officials. If you have a 14-year name as a Fed government or are leader of a local Federal Reserve bank, it’s easier to make the controversial decision to raise rates.
Independence doesn’t ensure errors won’t be made. It only increases the likelihood that, if they are made, they will be economical judgmental mistakes rather than attempts to win voters ‘ pursuit.
The Fed’s democracy isn’t complete. Legislation was reverse it if Congress passes it. The Senate approves the rulers, and the leader appoints them. The Fed head frequently answers questions and testifies before parliamentary commissions.
However, the governors do have a good deal of freedom because they are elected just for a reason and have longer terms. Recent Fed chair Powell wants to keep things that way, just like he would any other Fed official. In his six years as head, Powell has demonstrated political astuteness in dealing with Congress.
Doing the same with this leader may prove more difficult.
The seven rulers and five Federal Reserve Bank presidents who are members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee held a meeting in January, but they didn’t give the president what he claimed he would require. The FOMC voted this time to keep costs intact after dropping their standard interest rate by a full percentage point since last September.
At his post-meeting press conference, Powell said the Fed wants to see more progress in reducing inflation toward the Fed’s 2 % purpose before cutting again. To queries about the government’s remark that he would require lower prices, Powell gave uncombative answers.
” The president’s statement will not cause me to respond or post in any way.” It’s not suitable for me to accomplish so”, Powell said. The people should be assured that we will continue to do our jobs as we have always, using our resources to achieve our objectives, including steady prices and highest employment.
He stated that the Fed may continue to use financial data to inform its decisions. ” Don’t seem for us to do anything more”.
Did Powell succeed in keeping his head down? That’s up for debate. It’s a good start, nevertheless.
President Trump has shown he is vulnerable to market responses. He may want to keep in mind that the financial industry will be very damaging if a pending Fed rate split is perceived as caving to his needs. An impartial Fed is desired by the industry.
Urban Lehner, a former long-time Asia journalist and director for the Wall Street Journal, is now editor professor of DTN/The Progressive Farmer.  ,
This , content, originally published on February 4 by the latter media business and then republished by Asia Times with authority, is © Copyright 2025 DTN/The Progressive Farmer. All rights reserved.  , Follow , Urban Lehner , on Twitter: @urbanize
By selling technology companies to immigrants, America has financed a current account deficit that soared to US$ 1.2 trillion in 2024. Tech stocks, however, are trading at valuations not seen since 2000, when the NASDAQ Composite began a descent that wiped out 75 % of its market capitalization by 2002.
If expectations deteriorate regarding synthetic intelligence’s ability to generate revenue, was a technology crash lead to a financing crisis for the United States? The question of the January 27 collision in AI-related stocks in response to less expensive and more effective Chinese rivals still lingers. Every capital investment in the world pays close attention to these issues.
Europeans stopped buying US debts of all kinds – Treasury, loan, and business – after the post-Covid prices of 2021 and the Federal Reserve’s subsequent rise in interest rates. That signaled the end of a 40-year bulls industry in US securities. From a 1981 peak of 15 %, the US 30-year bond yield fell in a nearly straight line to an August 2020 low of just 1.41 %.
The inflationary wave of 2021-2022 put an end to this bull work. In March 2022, moreover, the US and its allies seized half of Russia’s$ 600 billion in foreign exchange reserves, prompting other central banks to shift away from US Treasury securities to gold and other assets.
However, the world’s appetite for American tech stocks has been stagnant for the past ten years, which was rekindled by the development of Large Language Models ( LLMs) last year. Are raised valuations for AI-related shares justified? Which two aspects affect how quickly and which industries are most likely to make money from AI?
China’s DeepSeek R1 type appears to have made a model performance discovery: tale layout and related improvements reduce the amount of processing required by one or two orders of magnitude.
DeepSeek, also, offers its unit at a small fraction of the price that its US competitors then charge. That is not always detrimental to the overall US tech sector. If China has a better systems, US companies may choose it speedily, and lower costs for AI simulation does benefit the users of AI models.
US and China compete in seven distinct subcategories of AI uses. China leads most of them, and its Artificial skills are likely to strengthen it. They are
The big question is about LLM’s timing. Although the payoff might be significant, it may not be as quick as anticipated.
LLM deployment in the enterprise still has little to do with organizational performance and human adaptation ( management buy-in, workflow adjustments, etc. ). seems to be years away. Cost savings for specific categories of expenses, such as call centers or repetitive coding tasks, may be easily realized. However, the development of AI for higher-skill work is still in its infancy.
What does this mean for Nvidia’s chipmakers? On the assumption that Nvidia GPUs will provide a lot of this activity, one could argue a bullish case for Nvidia based on all of the AI sectors listed above. However, this hypothesis requires closer scrutiny of Nvidia’s competitive advantages.
Nvidia has a greater advantage in computation when training language and vision models, but less so when inference ( running the resulting models to get useful results ) is at its disposal. Notably, Huawei’s Ascend AI chips already perform fairly well with the new DeepSeek models, with comparable or even better cost performance than the weakened Nvidia H800s ( the weakened Nvidia chip that was cleared for export to China )  .
Additionally, the case that the top US tech companies ( the so-called Magnificent Seven ) will control equity returns going forward is much weaker than the market is currently perceptive of it. If we are right, and tech market valuations shrink to some significant extent, what are the macroeconomic implications? Key capital flows are more dependent on a small number of very large companies than at any other time in US history.
Let’s say foreigners reduced their purchases of tech stocks as the value of the stocks declines. The United States would need to sell more bonds to both domestic and foreign investors to pay off its current account deficit and federal budget deficit. The chart below shows the amount of new Treasury debt bought by US banks, US households, foreign official institutions, and foreign private investors, respectively.
Banks stepped in and reabsorbed the$ 4 trillion in Covid subsidies that were funded by the Treasury debt, but by 2023 they had exhausted their savings deposits. Households, who were drawn to the higher interest rates on Treasuries, saw the biggest increase in new investment in Treasury securities. Additionally, foreign private investors decreased their Treasury holdings.  ,
A full-blown financial crisis is most unlikely. The cash-burning dotcoms of 2000 have been replaced by cash-rich monopolies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta. By offering higher bond yields to domestic and international investors, the United States can adjust to an air-pocket in the demand for its tech stocks.
However, the DeepSeek shock exposes flaws in Big Tech’s core strategies as well as in the stratospheric valuation of its best-performing stocks. The outcome is likely to be a combination of persistently higher interest rates, slower growth, a decline in wealth, and strong economic headwinds.
The S&, P’s technology sector, correspondingly, trades at a P/E of 37, compared to an overall P/E for the S&, P 500 of 26. That accounts for the largest portion of the difference between the lofty valuations of American stocks and those of European, Japanese, and Chinese stocks.
A brass-tacks gauge of equity valuation is the free cash flow (FCF ) yield, namely the ratio of cash income to market price. Investors accept less current income because they anticipate higher income in the future, the higher the FCF is expected to be. For the S&, P 500 as a whole, FCF is below 3, a level not seen since the eve of the tech stock crash of 2000.
For a monopoly like Microsoft, the free cash flow yield has fallen to just 2, the lowest on record.
Between 2020 and 2024, Big Tech invested more than double in capital expenditures, and it is still investing heavily in AI-supporting data centers. The DeepSeek shock raises questions about the viability of these plans economically: If Chinese developers can create cutting-edge models using innovative model architecture designs, the raw computing power under development could be significantly overvalued.
To entice price-sensitive buyers into the Treasury market, the US government—still running a record peacetime non-recession deficit of 6 % to 7 % of GDP—probably will have to offer higher yields. That’s a problem for the economy and also a problem for the Treasury, which is already paying$ 1 trillion a year in interest, nearly quadruple the service cost of America’s national debt in 2020.
It also puts a headwind in front of the US economy for interest-sensitive activity, particularly housing. Longer-term, the US runs the risk of an Italian-style spiral, in which the rising cost of debt service eats away at the budget and limits what the federal government can do to support the economy.
Steve Hsu is professor of theoretical physics and of computational mathematics, science, and engineering at Michigan State University, and the founder of several AI startups. Follow him on X at @hsu_steve. David P. Goldman serves as Asia Times ‘ deputy editor. Follow him on X at @davidpgoldman
They’re again. After a break earlier in the new millennium, American private equity firms are increasingly , targeting Japan for their Eastern investment techniques. And the Chinese government and regulators have taken bold steps to welcome them and help make Tokyo Tokyo the world’s first global financial hub.
Back in the late 1990s and early , 2000s , Japan was a favored destination for European alternative property managers. In 1999, for example, Newbridge Capital, co-founded by Texas Pacific Group ( then TPG), took a lot interest in , the online service provider , Livedoor.  ,
And, in 2000, J. Christopher Flowers and Ripplewood Holdings organized a consortium of investors to purchase Japan’s distressed Long Term Credit Bank, renaming it Shinsei ( translation:  , “rebirth” ). After Shinsei went public in 2004, the bargain was commonly regarded as one of the most successful private equity investments ever, both in Asia and in the early days of private equity investment.  ,
But by the time of the Great Financial Crisis, American businesses began to find other Asian nations,  , most notably , China and South Korea,  , more open and welcoming –countries , where owners could achieve greater financial returns with fewer regulation roadblocks.
While American investors retreated, Eastern PE money continued to undertake to Japan. The Eastern PE large PAG continued to build its staff and , investments , in Tokyo. The company bought Universal Studios Japan in 2015 and reportedly exited three years later with , a , five-times , return , on , their purchase.  , PAG ‘s , most significant investment of late , is , the , largest theme park by physical size, Nagasaki’s Huis Ten Bosch.
One industry observer , told Asia Times , that , while, about a decade ago,  , there were a few , of , what he calls , one-off “predecessor transactions”  , by mega , global , funds  , including KKR and Bain,  , Western PE firms , had , largely , remained circumspect , about Japan , – at least  , until recently , when , the country  , made a conscientious effort to win them back by committing to a series of sweeping , regulatory initiatives. These included:
• , Implementation of the Corporate Governance Code ( 2015, revisions in 2018 and 2021 ):  , Introduced to improve transparency, accountability, and decision-making in Japanese corporations, which aligns with international standards, the , code encourages companies to have more independent directors , to provide companies , an outside perspective , and , commitment to shareholder , rights, making Japanese companies more attractive to foreign investors, including PE firms.
The Stewardship Code’s implementation ( 2014, revised 2020 ): This code encourages institutional investors to work with the companies they invest in more, putting an emphasis on shareholder returns and sustainable growth. American PE firms discover working with shareholders that promote the implementation of value-adding techniques.
• , Tokyo Stock Exchange , market restructure ( 2022 ):  , This initiative simplified and restructured the TSE into three new segments: Prime, Standard, and Growth Markets. By highlighting encouraging growth sectors, the restructuring aims to define market dynamics, boost market visibility, and draw in foreign investors.
• , Guidelines for Corporate Takeovers , ( 2023 ):  , This bold action by The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry ( METI )  , is designed , to facilitate mergers and acquisitions ( including hostile takeovers ), recognizing them as critical to business revitalization and growth. The 2023 Guidelines aim to improve Chinese people M&, A practices by incorporating principles like shareholders ‘ intentions and the union’s fiduciary responsibility to make the Asian business manage business more visible to international clients.  , This directly benefits private equity firms, which , are a major driver of email M&, A , and as a” white hero” alternative to hostile protesters.
Business observers , today , say the governmental change toward , encouraging , greater foreign investment is also aided by a poor yen and persistently low interest rates.
The , effect on , offer growth has been , remarkable.  , The , Japanese , Private Equity Association and the Japanese Venture Capital Association  , track the number of , private equity , offers in the country as well as the price of , those , purchases. In 2020,  , there were 96 personal equity , deals valued at , 1.2 , trillion renminbi. By 2023,  , the , deal , figures and length had jumped to 125 private equity deals valued at 5.9 , trillion renminbi.
Expediting the re-entry of , western , secret equity , firms , has fallen mostly to FinCity Tokyo, founded in 2019. FinCity Tokyo,  , a public-private , engagement,  , was created to support  , owners understand and improve value in the novel regulatory environment.  , Its , stated aim is , making , Japan’s capital , an “international monetary centre”.
To do so,  , FinCity Tokyo , coordinates with the government of Japan, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government , and 57 , part companies including business associations, major financial institutions, international investors , and , service , services. The , organization , also , provides proper assistance to , financial , firms , seeking to , enter and , operate smoothly , in Japan. Since 2022, it has helped nine global companies, with goods of almost$ 1.3 trillion,  , to successfully activate and engage in Japan.  ,  ,
FinCity Tokyo ‘s , Executive Director Keiichi Aritomo , says one of its tasks is helping international investors secure workers in a tight labour market. The company even covers the costs of hiring new PE investors in search of qualified workers.
The failure of , Japanese business owners , to establish family succession , plans , used to strike Western investors as a stigma,  , but owners now , have come to , welcome , external ownership and professional management by Western buyers. Or, as Aritomo of FinCity Tokyo writes, “private equity firms provide the experience to offset labor shortage with skilled management and productivity gains.”
Bain &, Company, in a report published last spring,  , said , that Japan was the leading deal market in Asia-Pacific in 2023 , with private deals as the dominant strategy, noting “more companies are preferring to go private”. And , the , capital , needed , to complete deals via limited partnerships is plentiful. ” There is increasing LP appetite for Japan”, noted Sebastien Lamy, co-head of Bain &, Company’s Tokyo-based Asia Pacific PE practice.
PE firm , Carlyle, based in Washinton, DC, with investments and operations , globally,  , is , also focused on , Japan.  , In a report last September, the firm pointed to the positive regulatory changes, the attractive valuations, the stable political climate and the continued investment opportunities. ” We are seeing many overseas GPs]general partners ] establish offices in Japan for the first time” , , the firm said.
And, in an analysis last year,  , the management consulting firm,  , McKinsey , &, Company,  , noted that,  , while , Japanese , private equity , is , a growing presence in the financial landscape, the industry still has  , more room , to grow.
Increasingly, western private equity players , have gotten , the message.
Owen Blicksilver is a private equity-focused public relations executive in New York.
Around$ 70 billion was raised by Asian tech firms from global debt and equity markets in 2024. By 2025, the region’s TMT sector is expected to grow even further.
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British International Investment ( BII ), the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, has announced the launch of Sustainable Asia Renewable Assets ( SARA ), a new utility-scale renewable energy platform. SUSI Partners and Dutch growth bank FMO have been co-founded by SARA.
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Shareholders have been betting tremendously on an AI-driven coming over the past two decades, as tech stocks have led the S&, P 500 to a 60 % get. But they also bought the “barbarous artifact” of a financial era that preceded the economy’s identity, pushing the price of silver up by almost as much. Importantly, gold outperformed other hedges by a sizable percentage against the buck.
Why wall against severe distress amid effervescent tech-driven optimism? The answer is a bit could get wrong—catastrophically wrong, in reality. The dollar-based global economic system’s core asset is then tech stocks. The United States has sold US$ 24 trillion more of its property to immigrants than Americans have sold to immigrants.
That” net international investment position” of$ 24 trillion, up from$ 18 trillion at the end of Donald Trump’s first term in office, paid for America’s cumulative trade deficit over the past 30 years. For the past 10 years, immigrants have been buying stocks rather than US Treasury bonds, as in the history.
US federal loan is now lower than it was five years ago, thanks to international central banks. If the technology bubble turns out to be a balloon, so will the US dollar. The death of the money may depend on the competition for market share for AI. If, for example, China’s open-source DeepSeek beats ChatGPT and the other British large language concepts, tech shares was tank and, with them, the money.
There are many different ways to protect against the money. Some of them are interesting. An American budget deficit of 6 % to 7 % without a war or recession, as incoming Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Congress last week, is without precedent. But the currency’s position as a reserve money means that America has first rights on the nation’s capital.
The inflation-indexed US Treasury yields surge, partially fueled by hopes for a higher US gap under Trump, propelled the dollar higher against all major currencies. If US prices increases, so does US interest charges, and the economy’s transfer rate will rise against other currencies, even while the money loses value.
But even while all currencies sank against the dollar in response to rising “real” ( inflation-indexed ) Treasury yields, gold rose, breaking a pattern that prevailed from 2007 through 2022.
The US and its supporters seized Russian resources in March 2022, breaking the long-term connection between TIPS and metal. China, Saudi Arabia, India, and other central banks slowly shifted resources away from Treasuries into silver. On paper, TIPS and silver offer similar payments: If the money tanks and US prices increase, both assets may gain value.
The distinction is that the Treasury cannot acquire central bank vault gold in the same way it is acquire central banks holdings of its own obligations. Up to 80 basis points ( 0.8 % ) of the rise in TIPS yields during the past six months, I showed in a January 10 analysis, can be attributed to foreign central banks ‘ sales of US Treasury securities.
The hedge fund group has turned northern banks into gold. The price of real gold and the option price on the gold price are both affected by a shift in the relationship. Implied volatility is a standardized measure of the cost of metal choices, and under normal conditions, it falls as the gold rate rises.
That’s because silver mining companies have been the biggest consumers of golden choices, when the gold rate falls, they buy alternatives to lock in their revenue, and vice versa. But in 2024, something fresh happened: The cost of gold possibilities rose along with the golden value.
The gold implied volatility against price forms a” V” in the scatter chart below. That indicates that hedge funds placed wagers on a rise in silver prices.
Gold is a standout in the complex of options on macro variables ( stocks, currencies, bonds, and commodities ). While other markets are softer in terms of risk and the price of gold options ( implied volatility ) is trading at a two-year high.
Gold’s virtue is that it has a government decree-free value; it is the only form of currency that can be accepted if all else fails. It is the economic resource of last resort. With some exceptions, the bill of nearly all of the major markets has increased alarmingly in relation to economic output over the past ten years.
President Trump is walking a rope, trying to stimulate financial growth through tax breaks while juggling a document non-war, non-recession budget gap. The dangerous nature of this is heightened by Gold’s outperformance.
Observe David P Goldman on X at @davidpgoldman