Lionel Lim

Huawei reportedly keeps getting advanced chips, even as the U.S. tries to tighten the screws on China’s semiconductor industry

/asia/2024/04/26/huawei-homegrown-chip-pura-70-smartphone-mate-60-pro-us-chip-controls-apple/

It’s not just investors watching the Fed: Central bankers across Southeast Asia are trying to time rate cuts to ensure their currencies don’t collapse

/asia/2024/04/25/fed-central-bankers-southeast-asia-time-rate-cuts-ensure-currencies-no-collapse/

China drives both EV production and sales—but the fate of the country’s EV brands could soon be in the hands of emerging markets like Thailand

/asia/2024/04/24/china-ev-production-sales-iea-southeast-asia-byd-thailand/

Apple has its worst China quarter since 2020 as Huawei’s resurgence eats into its market share, says new research

/asia/2024/04/24/apple-iphone-china-sales-drops-huawei-honor/

Grab’s COO thinks there’s ‘tremendous upside’ in fast-growing Southeast Asia after the startup recently reported its first-ever profitable quarter

/asia/2024/04/27/grab-coo-alex-hungate-first-profitable-quarter-tremendous-upside-southeast-asia/

Thomas Biesheuvel

Dinesh Nair

Crystal Tse

Bloomberg

BHP proposes deal to buy Anglo American in $39 billion mining mega-merger

/asia/2024/04/25/bhp-proposes-deal-buy-anglo-american-39-billion-mining-mega-merger/

Chinese suppliers shrug off U.S. tariff threats as customers flock to their cheap goods: ‘Even a 50% tariff won’t come close to driving them away’

/asia/2024/04/24/china-suppliers-shrug-off-us-tariff-threat-donald-trump-joe-biden-canton-fair/

Apple could be trying to ‘hedge its supply-chain bets’ away from China with CEO Tim Cook’s whirlwind Southeast Asia tour

/asia/2024/04/19/apple-ceo-tim-cook-visit-southeast-asia-vietnam-indonesia-singapore-hedge-supply-chain-bets-china/

Malaysia wants to benefit from chip companies trying to diversify their supply chains: ‘There is enough growth that will go around’

/asia/2024/04/18/malaysia-wants-to-benefit-diversifying-chip-supply-chains-us-china-tech-rivalry/

Fortune Asia

Fortune Asia | Fortune Asia

Anna Harman, a former lawyer and Bridgewater asset manager, is a mom of two who has remained at the helm of Studs since she founded it in 2019.

Studs’ 39-year-old founder ditched her law career to launch the adult version of Claire’s

Features

So this is a studs escape. It's our signature yellow ear. It has a wide assortment of both piercings to illustrate the types of piercings you could get at studs as well as all of our fashion jewelry. And we actually use these to help people see both the jewelry as well as the types of piercings they could get. Hi. My name is Anna Harmon. I'm 39 years old. I'm the CEO and co founder of Studs and this is my secret to success. I grew up in Westchester, right outside of New York City. My father was an architect. My mom was an executive and a big role model for me. I went to school at the same school for my entire time from kindergarten to 12th grade. And then I went to Princeton University and I studied English right after I graduated from college, I went to Boston University for law school. I had always known that I wanted to go to law school and potentially be a lawyer. I was a mutual fund formation lawyer which is unfortunately about as boring as it sounds and was part of the reason I stopped practicing law, I knew I never wanted to be a partner at a law firm. So that was never my goal. Um And then when I left, uh being a lawyer, I went on to go work at an asset manager called Bridgewater. So I spent a little under five years at Bridgewater. I then left and I went to a start up that was funded and founded by a former very senior Bridgewater person. We actually sold that business after about two years. And I went to work at Wal Mart's Incubator and spent another about two years there primarily working on a business that was a text to shopping business called Jet Black. So I started thinking about studs because I had a sort of shrink piercing experience while working at Jet Black. I went to get another piercing about five or six years ago. Now, a second piercing on my left ear and I went to a very fancy piercing parlor downtown and they told me I would have to wait about two hours and I probably would have spent 500 or $750. And I ended up going to the tattoo parlor and I had a really good experience piercing wise at the tattoo parlor. It was done healthily and safely with a needle. And I really liked my piercer, but I didn't like the jewelry and it was still expensive and I was very personally out of place at the tattoo parlor. And so then I actually started to do research to understand. Well, what had happened to the mall brands that I remembered going to when I was growing up and what I learned was there really isn't a place to go until studs. Once you've graduated from those mall brands, if you want to get a piercing on your ear, done with a needle with a cute selection of earrings, that concept didn't exist. Nobody had created it. And so I felt like, well, I would have wanted to go there. So what if that were the business that I were to start? When you think of the mall brands that you visit? The first thing I think you think of is they're meant for younger customers. In particular, Claire is really self described as targeted at tweens studs, core demographic is 18 to 35 and our median age is actually 27. And so everything we think about in terms of the store experience, the store design, how we actually want people to interact with. The brand is for an older customer that Claire's was really never designed for. To me, we were filling a hole in the market, taking us back to November of 2019. We're opening the first stud studio in Nolita. I am five months pregnant, I guess, or four months pregnant thereabouts. And it was interesting, you know, when you start a start up and it's a physical experience, meaning it's a store right at some level, it's real like this is going to work or it's not going to work. And what was fascinating was it worked from day one. We had lines out the door at the Nolita Studio the first weekend. And so that was really validating for Lisa and I, because when you are selling products online, nobody knows how many products you're selling. Right on day one, you might sell nothing. You might sell two right units of whatever it is you're making for. If you start a store, people know if people are in the store with you. And so we felt really lucky and inspired that the thing we had created was generating both that much buzz that Lisa had created and that people wanted the product that we made. Well, when we first started, you know, working in a co working space, we funded it ourselves. We obviously weren't spending much money on it, but we spent probably 4 to 6 months pre fundraise investing in the business by ourselves. Then we went out and fund raised for our seed round in, I would say February of 2019 ish. We raised a little north of 3 million. So COVID was really, I think out of total left field for us. So we had launched the first studio in November of 2019 and we had launched a second studio actually in Hudson Yards in late late February of 2020 about weeks before obviously, the world shut down and we were super lucky to have raised another round of financing right before COVID happened, also about two weeks before the world shut down. And so we were well positioned financially, but obviously the business had to close for about six months. And at the time I was eight months pregnant. And I remember being really concerned one, what would happen to me, to my child, to everyone in my family's lives because of this. But also what would happen to our business, which at the end of the day, right, post COVID, we were so lucky to see people come back and wanna get piercings again. But we were questioning at the beginning of COVID whether that would be true. I think the biggest thing about the secret to success for studs is again, the amazing experience that the studio team provides to customers every single day. And so we really focus at studs on. How can we continue to enable that from our HQ office? Because the reason people like studs is because studs has great reviews and because they have a great experience at studs and then they tell their friends.

LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky shares his insights around the job market and talent shifts in a landscape increasingly—and rapidly—shaped by automation.

These are the skills LinkedIn’s CEO thinks will be most valuable in an AI future

Photo illustration by Fortune. Photograph courtesy of LinkedIn.

Leadership

You know, to, again, to maybe reframe this one a little bit. Um I'm two for two. I'm reframing both your questions now. So, thanks. Uh We're, we're so excited that that's, that's what the people we interview do all the time. We're really just props the questions we ask are your relative and when you reframe a question, it helps you provide the kind of answer you wanted to provide. So, yeah, go ahead. What do you have? Uh Do you have a question for my answer? Welcome to leadership. Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I'm Alan Murray and I'm Mia, you know, there are lots of people who are worried that A I is gonna eliminate jobs, maybe their job. There are others who say, oh, it'll eliminate some jobs, but it'll create even more. And all of us are just speculating but you have the data. So what is your data show where, where are skills and jobs uh in less demand and what skills and uh are in more demand as we move into this profound technological change. It's really important for people to change the way you think about jobs jobs historically been thought about as a title. Um But fundamentally, if you can take a different view, which is jobs as a set of tasks, your job is a set of tasks. My job is a set of tasks. Everybody's job to be done is a set of tasks. And when you can start to really break down, every job is a set of tasks, you can then take the next step to understand where technology can help either augment uh or make certain tasks more efficient or certain tasks are going to be just completely automated. Then you start to realize that, oh, you know what, like if your job is just a set of tasks that is going to be automated, you need to start looking for a new job. So one of the things that we're doing across linkedin is taking every role in the world and doing a score of certain jobs as tasks and, and understanding that, hey, there's certain jobs like, you know, a lot of copywriting or translation type jobs where the majority of the task to do those jobs are tasks that can be automated. So, you know, it's important to start thinking about a new job. The majority of jobs though in the world are the types of jobs where you know AAA specific portion of those tasks will be automated and you need to learn how to leverage those tools to help in that part of your job. But still a lot of human skills are needed for uh for the majority of the job. Yeah. So give us some examples of skills that you think are going to be more valuable in the future because of what's happening now. First and foremost, it, it is really important to learn, learn, learn your way into using these A I tools. It's only going to help you in whatever job that you're doing to, you know, be able to leverage these tools to help you be more productive. My big bet is on people skills. Um you know, learning how to build people skills, communicating, um knowing what to do when your camera falls off of your computer during a podcast interview, which, which is just so our listeners know just happened to run and he did a total of glimpse right in the middle of the interview is gone. Yeah. Uh EQ communication, collaboration, creativity. That's a place where, um you know, I, I would be putting a lot of time and effort. Um if I was just entering the workforce or thinking about what the future might look like. And then I think that there's this concept which is for so long we've been taught or thought about the importance is to build for stability. And I think the future is more about building for agility instead of stability, uh being able to adapt, being able to, you know, take on something new the way I did my job last year is gonna be the way I'm gonna do my job this year. So I think a lot of that goes into what I would at least be thinking about right now entering the workforce, or at least I'm thinking about for myself transitioning, you know, through a leadership job that's always changing as well. So, what role do college degrees play in all of this? Are they important for different reasons? Because, um it's not just the skills that you accrue through a degree, maybe not just a four year degree. Um But, but it's also eq right, the last part is spot on, especially on the EQ side. And, you know, I'm not sure that outside of um being with a group of people doing work or being with people at a school, et cetera, there, there's been a real strong way to teach, um you know, a lot of people skills besides just kind of being in that environment. But I think it's an area of opportunity that, you know, society, we need to really figure out um in terms of, you know, college degrees in general, I think degrees are uh important in so far as they contain the set of skills that are really important and necessary um to be productive in society. Historically, recruiters would use degrees as you know, the the way to assess or find talent because we had no better view to do it. So for example, you, you see a lot of recruiters do things like, well, I just want to see candidates that, you know, went to Princeton, someone went to Princeton. They must be smart. Um, or they have, you know, you know, or, or previous company, this person used to work at Google, they must be smart as well. And when you only look at, I don't know the, the degree or the pedigree on its own as, as the post goes underneath it, two things happen. Number one, everyone's looking at the same group of talent because all the recruiters do the same search some people who, you know, used to work at Google and went to Princeton, like everyone's looking at this tiny group of people which does not create a very equitable or efficient labor market. Um And number two, it turns out that, you know, often times those degrees alone aren't signal enough for what needs to be, you know, done inside of the job. So we've been pushing a lot on, you know, skills are the currency, the actual skills that need to be done and it falls in line really well with this idea of the future about looking at jobs, set of tasks, as opposed to just the job title itself. I think across the board requiring require ourselves to go a level deeper in terms of what are the actual, you know, skills or tasks to be done instead of just relying on the, you know, the name of the degree alone. But, um, I really think you're on to something that with the EQ point and that's something we need to figure out.

Advantage Solutions CEO Dave Peacock encourages his employees to follow their dreams-even if it takes their career somewhere else.

CEO says leaders need to recognize the fact that not all employees want a longterm career with one company

Conferences

CEO says leaders need to recognize that not all employees want a longterm career with one company

OK. Vantage Solutions is an outsourced supplier of sales and marketing services to most of the largest consumer products companies and retailers in the country. Um We are a peer purpose driven business that really is designed to unlock value for the consumers and shoppers that our CPG partners and our retail partners work with purpose is at the heart of everything we do at Advantage Solutions. We often talk about how we combine people plus purpose to drive performance. Um It's, it's, it's in how we treat and serve our customers, their consumers and really how we treat and serve each other in an environment that is designed to just enhance opportunities and connect people with each other and with experiences and the products that, that enrich their lives. I believe all companies have to come from a place of purpose. It has to be more than just trying to sell more product, but there has to be a real genuine authentic connection, both with your customers and more importantly with your teammates. I think to be an authentic purpose driven leader, you need to pour into your people, relate with them, connect with them, be vulnerable with them. Uh be open to what their dreams are and recognize that not everyone is going to stay and have a 30 or 40 year career with your company anymore. And so have an objective of helping that person realize their dreams wherever it may lead them and celebrate those dreams. When they realized whether they stay for 30 years or they stay for three months, whether it's someone who's gonna earn a wage to send their kids to college or in our case, it's a teenager with a summer job who's learning some just basic skills and the ability to look an adult in the eye and interact with them. It's critical to recognize where people are, meet them there and then help them realize their best and greatest potential. I think there are means and there's results. I think the results are the things that we constantly track like every company um often financial, but those are a by product of how we do, what we do and how we treat the people that we interact with either customers or teammates. Uh and, and how we show up in the market. And I think as leaders, it's important and incumbent upon us to model the behavior we are looking for out of our other leaders in the organization. Uh which means meeting people at the front line. If that's part of your job, it means meeting them in the factory. If that's part of your job, it means spending genuine time and being open, transparent and vulnerable with them so that they know you're a real human being and, and that there's not an US and they scenario within the company, I think leading with purpose in any company is about truly showing up in a genuine way and how you interact with people. I think it's connecting with them at a human level um from front line to the boardroom and I think it's, um, really being clear and not just what you say but how you act and then reinforcing the behaviors you're looking for in the organization. And at times of rooting out behaviors when they're not aligned with the principles and the purpose of your business.

Steven Tananbaum is Founder, Managing Partner, and Chief Investment Officer of GoldenTree Asset Management, which manages nearly $55 billion internationally.

The secret to being a good investor, according to this asset management CIO

So what does Golden Tree do? And when was it founded? So we were founded in 2000 and we're of an asset management firm that focuses on credit, high yield, it could be loans, it could be structured products, emerging market. And then if there are insights we have in the credit markets, in the equity markets. So it gives us a pretty long playlist to operate in. So purpose is really values and how you approach something. That's what purpose means to me. And so when we're leading with purpose, it's all agreeing on what the process and the way that we're conducting our research is why it's important is this is a team sport. And if we're all in this together, following the same approach that's going to lead to something special. And we've been able to create something special over the 23 years going on 24th that we've been in business that's been differentiated and consistent. For the most part, we're invested in public securities. You can actually, if you make a bad decision, you can actually change that decision that you can sell. But what's worse is not wanting to admit that your premise is wrong and that the price doesn't fully reflect that the premise is wrong. And so if that's the case, you should be selling or likewise, if something is attractive, you should be buying more, if it looks like you're gonna be right and the price doesn't fully reflect that. So being upfront about that feeling that it's safe to do that um is also important. So what are we most proud of at Golden Tree? First is our consistency about performance across our product line. We keep developing our product line, improving our product line, growing our offerings and having consistent out performance. So we're very proud of that. We're proud of the meritocracy culture that we have. We're very proud of that. About half of our partners were promoted from a within. So people know that if they do well, they're going to be recognized and there's a record that half of our 25 partners have been um promoted from a within. So, so taking together we um are very proud of what we've done our 1st 23 years, almost going on 24 and uh very excited about the next 24 years plus, believe that the best is yet to come.

Huawei reportedly keeps getting advanced chips, even as the U.S. tries to tighten the screws on China’s semiconductor industry

Tech

Grab’s COO thinks there’s ‘tremendous upside’ in fast-growing Southeast Asia after the startup recently reported its first-ever profitable quarter