In the Media

Developing captives allows the market to elevate Hong Kong’s value chain in the insurance business. Nurturing talent, refining regulatory regimes and bolstering demand will help the city’s nascent industry ecosystem grow. Oswald Chan reports.

In the middle of last month, Standard Chartered Group announced that it planned to cut over 15% of its back-office and support roles by 2030, affecting nearly 8,000 employees. At an investor briefing, Chief Executive Bill Winters said that the bank’s strategy was “not simply about cutting costs” but, in certain cases, about replacing “lower-value human capital” with financial and investment capital.

Dr. Tingting Fan of HKU Business School told CNA that young consumers spend differently from older generations, willingly paying for merchandise and celebrity encounters—consumption that greatly benefits the local economy.

Prof. Echo Wan, Associate Dean (MBA) and Director of the Institute of Behavioural and Decision Science at HKU Business School, shared her perspective on the Beyblade craze sweeping Hong Kong in 2026. Against a backdrop of widespread digital fatigue, Prof. Wan noted that Gen Z digital natives — having grown up immersed in touchscreens and online games — are drawn to physical objects not out of nostalgia, but out of an innate human curiosity that tactile, "low-tech" experiences uniquely satisfy. She pointed out that the social and physical are deeply intertwined, and that meaningful tangible objects help people establish a sense of "self-continuity" — a connection to the past that is central to identity.

Returning to Hong Kong from abroad recently, I experienced Libpet’s APS (Autonomous Passenger Service) robot at the Hong Kong International Airport. This wasn't a conceptual product sitting in a showroom; it was operating in a real-world airport environment. After inputting the destination, the robot navigated the route and carried the passenger directly to the designated area.

Prof. Joseph Chan from HKU Business School told Xinhua that Hong Kong's financial markets will enable two-way synergies between economy and tech innovation. AI will drive iterative upgrades in financial services, while capital keeps nourishing the innovation sector.

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of discussion in the tech world regarding the shortcomings of OpenClaw (popularly known as "Lobster"). These issues include unpredictable behavior, accidental data loss, skyrocketing computing costs, and the risk of becoming a channel for hacker attacks.

The 2026 World Cup is set to kick off next month, and this quadrennial event will once again tug at the heartstrings of hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide. Co-hosted for the first time by the US, Canada, and Mexico, the tournament will see the number of matches increase by over 62% from 64 in the previous edition to 104 this time, while its duration will be extended from 29 to 40 days.