Hong Kong Wealth, Fund Assets Hit $4.5 Trillion as Inflows Surge
Net fund inflows jumped 81% to HK$705 billion across the industry in 2024, according to a survey conducted by the Securities and Futures Commission. In particular, inflows for the asset management and fund advisory business soared 571% to HK$321 billion.
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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Free childcare crisis as surge in demand leaves Labour with funding black hole
Ministers have been warned the childcare sector is at risk of 'collapse' after a boom in demand for free care left a major government scheme in financial peril. A plan to expand free childcare for British families is set to cost the government an extra £1bn per year at a time when ministers are grappling to fill the gaping black hole in public finances. Labour has not spelled out how the funding gap will be filled, but experts predict the shortfall will create 'substantial pressure' on the government and could put the entire childcare sector under threat. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Bridget Phillipson insisted the unexpectedly high take-up – a quarter higher than predicted – was a 'good problem to have' and would not leave children without places. But the education secretary could not guarantee that parents would get a space at their local nursery in September, when the scheme expands to offer eligible children aged nine months and older 30 hours a week of free childcare. Industry leaders said parents would be left 'disappointed' while nurseries warned a lack of staff meant they were already struggling to deliver the government's pledge. CEO of the Early Years Alliance, Neil Leitch, told The Independent: 'One thing is absolutely clear: if 80 per cent of all hours delivered are government hours, and those hours are inadequately funded, the infrastructure will collapse over a period of time. 'I can't say it will be one year or five years, but you can bet your bottom dollar if you don't give somebody enough money to deliver a service, at some point they stop.' Figures published in March show the number of people newly entitled to free childcare was 26 per cent higher than originally estimated – 379,000 compared to 302,000. This meant that the Department for Education spent £2bn on the policy last year, up from a planned £1.6bn. But this is only set to grow as further hours of free childcare are rolled out. According to the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies, the cost of extending free childcare to under-3s could end up costing £1bn more a year than previously expected, from 2026/7 onwards – up from around £4bn to approximately £5bn. A boost to funding announced in Rachel Reeves's spending review, of £640m, would 'go some way to filling this gap… [but] could still leave substantial pressure from higher-than-expected take-up', the IFS said. IFS associate director Christine Farquharson said the DfE will still likely face 'difficult choices' within its budget and may have to 'trim back' spending in other areas to meet its childcare commitments. 'They have a fixed pot of money. When one thing becomes more expensive, that puts more pressure on other areas of the [education] budget,' she told The Independent. Ms Farquharson said predictions for how many parents would take up the free hours were 'complex' but added: 'It does seem like [the Tories] underestimated take-up pretty systematically.' It is just one of many financial decisions facing the chancellor ahead of the autumn Budget after planned welfare cuts, aimed at saving £5bn annually, were reversed. Ms Reeves is being pushed to bend her rules on borrowing or to raise taxes to keep public finances on track. The free childcare policy was launched in December 2023 with great fanfare under former Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt. The first stage was put in place from September 2024, when the government extended 15 hours a week of free term-time childcare to working parents with a child aged nine months and over. From September, that will be extended to 30 hours a week. Labour say they were left a 'pledge without a plan' when they entered government. Ministers have been working to massively expand the number of nursery spaces and staff but the task has been made more difficult by the fact that, unlike schools, many nurseries are private providers. Industry leaders warned that, with 8 in 10 of all nursery hours soon to be paid for by the government, the infrastructure was at risk of 'collapse' without more money. The sector has already been forced to absorb huge additional costs in recent years, including April's national insurance rise, it warned. Childcare in the UK is one of the most expensive in the world, according to the OECD. Mr Leitch added: 'What we have to bear in mind is that we've already got a recruitment and retention crisis. The reality is, many settings don't have the people to be able to accommodate those additional hours. So I'm afraid there will be parents that will be disappointed.' Sarah Ronan, the director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, said the IFS was right to sound the alarm, adding that if the government did not match demand with funding it is leaving providers with 'no choice' but to limit the number of places they offer – or raise fees. 'The harsh reality is that if providers don't do that, they'll face closure and then we'll have an even worse crisis on our hands,' she said. Purnima Tanuku, executive chair of the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), said the government's ambitions 'will be put at risk if there is not sufficient investment in early years'. She added that 'almost 70 per cent of nurseries told us that staff shortages mean they cannot offer the children's places they have room to deliver'. Munira Wilson, the Lib Dem education spokesperson, said providers had been left 'hanging by a thread and parents [are] facing the prospect of childcare deserts'. 'The government need to ensure that the funding for childcare hours matches the actual costs of delivery,' she said. Official statistics released last week showed a 7.2 per cent increase in early years staff, the largest annual rise since the series began. The Department for Education would not be drawn on where any extra money might come from. But Ms Phillipson insisted she was unafraid of the policy's popularity. She urged families to check what they are entitled to, adding: 'I want as many parents as possible to take up the offer. It allows parents to juggle work and family life, but it also sets up children to succeed. And the demand that parents are showing is a good problem to have, because it also brings economic dividends as well. 'If people are able to work, or work a few more hours… that helps us all as a society as well and it gets economic growth going.' Ms Phillipson has previously warned that, as the policy expands again in September, parents in the first wave might not get their first choice of nursery. Asked if she could say that all parents who want a space would get one, she told The Independent: 'What I can't guarantee is that it will be as close to home as they would like or it will be their first choice, but we're confident that the rollout will go well in September.' Ms Farquharson did add that the higher uptake of free childcare could ultimately be a good sign for the economy, even if it is more expensive in the short-term. 'This higher uptake might mean that we're getting a lot more parents moving into paid work because of these entitlements than first predicted,' she said. 'If the goal for this policy is to drive growth, then this would be a fantastic success story.' However, the extent to which that is the case will only become apparent over the next few years, she said. A DfE spokesperson said: 'High-quality, affordable childcare plays a vital role in our Plan for Change, which is why early years funding will rise to over £9bn next year, helping us meet our target of getting tens of thousands more children each year ready for school. 'We're backing families with this record investment including a £75m grant this year to support providers in delivering more places and a 45 per cent uplift in early year pupil premium, building on the real difference this is making for families as highlighted by the Coram survey who say costs for some has halved.'
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
7 Business Lessons For AI
From above photo of an anonymous African-American woman analyzing business graph on a laptop ... More computer while sitting at restaurant desk with notebook, pen and eyeglasses. When considering any implementation of AI in a business, leadership teams have a weighty responsibility. This is an approach that people want to get right. They face a few challenges – that the technology is so nascent, that there doesn't seem to be a lot of road maps available for companies, and that many people instinctively distrust large language models to automate processes. So what's to be done? A Leader's Perspective Here's where I recently got some insights from a paper written by Lidiane Jones, who was previously head of Slack, and CEO of Bumble, a major dating platform. Jones breaks down some of the aspects of AI implementation that C-suite people are looking at. Data Transfers and Governance Jones points out that transformations like ETL (extract, transform, load) and ELT (extract, load, transform) predated AI, but data is still siloed in many cases. One solution Jones touts is an 'omnichannel data strategy' – this, she writes, 'will ensure privacy and security of your data, ease of access for business applications, offer real time capabilities and can integrate with your everyday tools.' Compliance with Financial Data Rules For example, Jones speaks about the need to focus on compliance in some areas. 'Every company has critical financial data, subject to audit, regulation and compliance that must be carefully protected,' she writes. 'Normally, for more scaled companies, this data sits on an ERP system. Every CEO, CFO, COO and CRO needs critical real-time insight from these systems, to determine how the business is performing against plans, how expenses are tracking against the budget or how a change in employee investment … will affect the overall cost structure and velocity of the business, among numerous other capital allocation considerations.' Business Intelligence for the Win In terms of general business intelligence, Jones spins a story to illustrate: 'Imagine a Sales Executive who develops a multi-year high trust relationship with one of a company's most important large customer, and she decides to leave the company for a better career opportunity,' she writes. 'Historically, though there will be good information about that customer and notes from this leader, much of her institutional knowledge leaves with her. Corporate human knowledge exists within organizations, and is shaped by the culture, people and business processes.' She then addresses the role of workflow tools and other platform resources. 'Collaboration software of all kinds like Slack, Google Workspace and Teams … have a lot of people's knowledge embedded in them that is hardly ever nurtured,' she adds. 'Unstructured data like this is highly effective in training LLMs, and can provide opportunities that haven't existed before - like capturing the sentiment of what this large customer loved the most about their relationship with this Sales Executive.' She also gave a nod to the potential difficulties, conceding that ' it might feel daunting to expand data strategy planning to be as broad as this,' but notes that partnering with vendors and other firms can help. 'Phasing and prioritizing how you bring more of your data into a single system is key to making progress and capturing business value along the way,' she writes. Agents do the Agenting Jones also makes an important point about the use of AI agents. It goes sort of like this: we're used to computers doing calculations, and digesting and presenting information, but these new systems can actually brainstorm on their own to change processes. 'In many instances, agents can optimize workflows themselves as they determine more effective ways to get the work done,' she writes. A Story of Implementation Citing ChatGPT's meteoric rise, Jones talked about using these technologies in the context of her work at Slack, which is, after all, a business communication tool. She chronicled the firm's connection with companies like OpenAI circa 2017. 'At the time, when I was leading Slack, it was exciting to collaborate with OpenAI, Cohere and Anthropic to use their LLMs to help our customers with some of the most challenging productivity challenges at Slack,' she writes. The challenges she enumerates: 'finding a conversation they knew they had but couldn't remember in what channel, or help customers manage the large amount of messages they received with summaries and prioritization, optimize search for information discovery and so much more.' Then, too, the company created tools. 'We introduced Slack Canvas based templates to help our customers quickly create content based on their corporate information, and captured Huddles' meeting notes and action items, and that was just the beginning,' she explains. 'The capabilities of LLMs gave us the opportunity to solve real-world customer challenges in a pleasant and insightful way, while maintaining the experience of the Slack brand.' Calling this kind of thing the 'table stakes' of the new corporate world, Jones walks us through a lot of the way stations on the path to what she calls 'co-intelligence.' That includes workflow automation, agentic AI, multi-agent systems, and new interfaces. Our AI Brethren Here's one way that Jones characterizes managing an AI: 'Considering autonomous agents as truly 'digital workers' can be a helpful framing for questions we already think of today with 'human workers' like: how does the employer track the quality of the work done? What systems does the digital worker have access to? If the company is audited, how do we track what steps and actions were taken by the digital worker? If the digital worker's actions turn malicious, how do we terminate the agent?' As for the extent of agent autonomy, Jones suggests that fully autonomous agents will be able to handle a complex or 'scoped' job on their own, conceding, though, that 'even an autonomous agent, like a human, needs a job scope and definition - or a set of instructions - on the job at hand.' This new world is one we will have to reckon with soon. Four Principles of Leadership Jones finished with a set of ideas for those who are considering these kinds of deployments. 1. Be hands-on: as a leader, stay close to what's happening 2. This one goes back to prior points: working with vendors and partners is a plus 3. Build an AI-first culture with AI-native projects 4. Find the value for your company I found this to be pretty useful for someone who is contemplating a big move in the age of AI. Some of the best ideas for leadership can be gleaned from TED talks, conferences, and these kinds of personal papers on experience with the industry.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
If You Had Invested in Elon Musk's Companies 10 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today
You might be wondering just how rich they could be if they'd invested in Elon Musk's companies a decade ago, when he was still just a rich guy and not the richest man alive, according to Forbes. After all, he must have made smart investments to get so rich, right? So why couldn't you be just as rich if you'd invested in the same way? Or at least super rich? So, let's take a look at the companies Musk founded and how they've helped him grow his wealth, as well as how rich you'd be if you'd invested 10 years ago. Check Out: For You: Musk's Companies Musk has indeed grown rich as a result of founding and then selling companies that went on to become very successful. His first company, Zip2, is now long gone, having been absorbed by another company. But it is where he made his first millions when he sold it and made $22 million, according to Forbes. He then took that money and invested in PayPal and that's where our story begins. See Next: PayPal Musk founded PayPal with his friend and business partner at the time, Peter Thiel. Though the application, aimed at allowing businesses to pay each other digitally, didn't get off to a great start, it has since done very well. PayPal is now one of the most used applications for the transfer of funds between parties. Musk is no longer involved with PayPal. In fact, he was removed from the company as CEO and replaced by Thiel by the board. Like with Zip2, the board found Musk to be a less-than-ideal leader. But that doesn't mean his initial idea wasn't great. Indeed, if you invested in PayPal back in 2015, when the company split from eBay to become its own entity, your stock growth would be about 200%. It's not rocket growth, of course, but it's still not bad. As of July 2015, PayPal stock was worth $38 per share, according to Nasdaq. As of June 2025, it's worth $74. So, if you'd invested $10,000 in PayPal 10 years ago, today, you'd have $19,500. Not bad. SpaceX SpaceX is one of the companies Musk is most well-known for. It has helped contribute to better telecommunications via its Starlink offshoot and it is heavily funded by government programs to explore space. Since 2008, the United States taxpayers have paid SpaceX more than $20 billion in government contracts, according to Fox Business. Musk's 42% stake today is valued at $147 billion, according to Forbes. SpaceX is not publicly traded, but you can buy it with a tool like EquityZen. Tesla Tesla is perhaps the other most well-known of Musk's companies. In 2004, two men, Martin Eberhard and Marc Terpenning, founded the car company after the inventor Nikola Tesla to create electric vehicles for eco-conscious drivers. Though Musk invested in Tesla early on and was chairman of the board, he took over as CEO in 2008, after ousting Eberhard. The company continued to do well, but it was not the phenomenon it is today. In 2015, the average closing price of Tesla stock was $16 per share, according to Macrotrends. As of June 2025, Tesla stock, even down from its height, is trading for $317 per share. That's a growth of more than 1,900%. In short, if you invested $10,000 in Tesla stock 10 years ago, you'd have approximately $304,000 today. OpenAI Many people still don't know about OpenAI, Musk's nonprofit, which he co-founded in 2015. The purpose of this company is to research friendly AI that supports humanity. He has since resigned from the board due to Tesla AI conflicts. And because it is a non-profit, privately owned company, investors cannot buy shares, so you would not have been able to make any money here, either. To Invest or Not To Invest? In the end, you can't know for sure what will do well and what won't, but understanding patterns is helpful. This is why it's worth looking back at how investors make their money. It's also helpful to understand that Musk made his first billion not from investing in companies but from buying and selling them, which is a huge difference. If you're going to invest, it might be a good idea to look at index funds and diversified funds, rather than putting all your eggs in one or two baskets. Unless you've got the capital to invest in a startup and the mind to foresee its success. More From GOBankingRates Mark Cuban Warns of 'Red Rural Recession' -- 4 States That Could Get Hit Hard 7 Tax Loopholes the Rich Use To Pay Less and Build More Wealth How Much Money Is Needed To Be Considered Middle Class in Your State? This article originally appeared on If You Had Invested in Elon Musk's Companies 10 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
