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The HR Vendors of the Year Awards is widely regarded as one of Asia’s most respected platforms for recognising excellence among HR and workplace solution providers. Entries are evaluated by an independent judging panel of HR leaders and experts, assessing nominees on criteria including people, products and services, innovation, leadership, and industry contribution. The awards recognise organisations that demonstrate exceptional expertise, business impact, and commitment to helping clients address evolving workplace challenges. The Trinity Champion of Achievement holds particular significance as it recognises Crown Workspace’s sustained achievements over three consecutive years, from 2024 to 2026. This special recognition further reinforces Crown Workspace’s consistent contribution to the HR and workplace solutions ecosystem in Hong Kong.

What distinguishes Crown Workspace is its ability to combine workplace consultancy, relocation expertise, sustainability leadership, and project execution into a single integrated offering. In a market where many Hong Kong organisations are rightsizing their offices, adopting hybrid working models, and seeking cost-effective ways to optimise their workplaces, Crown Workspace helps clients transform their offices while achieving ESG objectives through services such as furniture resale, storage solutions, and recycling programmes.

Complementing these sustainability-focused initiatives is Crown Workspace’s proven capability to deliver complex, business-critical projects, including high-security relocations, IT and infrastructure moves, and large-scale workplace transformations. Backed by strong customer satisfaction and industry-leading operational standards, Crown Workspace provides organisations with a trusted partner to navigate workplace change while creating more efficient, sustainable, and future-ready work environments.

“We are honoured to receive both the Gold Award and this special recognition at the HR Vendors of the Year Awards,” said Jeffrey Chong, General Manager, Hong Kong, at Crown Worldwide Group. “The Trinity Champion of Achievement is particularly meaningful as it reflects the consistency of our work and the dedication of our team over the past three years. Hong Kong organisations are rethinking the role of the workplace. Increasingly, our clients are asking how they can create more flexible, sustainable and employee-centric environments while maintaining business continuity. These recognitions reflect our commitment to helping businesses navigate that transformation successfully. We remain focused on delivering secure and sustainable solutions that support our clients’ business goals.”

Building on these latest recognitions, Crown Workspace will continue investing in people, technology, and innovative workplace solutions, helping businesses create workplaces that are resilient, efficient, sustainable, and ready for the future.

For more information, please visit Crown Workspace’s website at crownworkspace.com.

Hashtag: #CrownWorkspace #HRVendors #BestWorkplaceConsultancy

https://crownworkspace.com/hk/

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Crown Workspace

Crown Workspace helps organisations manage workplace change through commercial and specialist relocations, move management, storage, furniture solutions, IT relocation services, and workplace consultancy. Supported by the global capabilities of Crown Worldwide Group, Crown Workspace delivers tailored solutions that minimise disruption, maximise value, and create positive outcomes for businesses, employees, and the environment.

Crown Workspace – Inspiring places and performance​ – www.crownworkspace.com

The HR Vendors of the Year Awards is widely regarded as one of Asia’s most respected platforms for recognising excellence among HR and workplace solution providers. Entries are evaluated by an independent judging panel of HR leaders and experts, assessing nominees on criteria including people, products and services, innovation, leadership, and industry contribution. The awards recognise organisations that demonstrate exceptional expertise, business impact, and commitment to helping clients address evolving workplace challenges. The Trinity Champion of Achievement holds particular significance as it recognises Crown Workspace’s sustained achievements over three consecutive years, from 2024 to 2026. This special recognition further reinforces Crown Workspace’s consistent contribution to the HR and workplace solutions ecosystem in Hong Kong.

What distinguishes Crown Workspace is its ability to combine workplace consultancy, relocation expertise, sustainability leadership, and project execution into a single integrated offering. In a market where many Hong Kong organisations are rightsizing their offices, adopting hybrid working models, and seeking cost-effective ways to optimise their workplaces, Crown Workspace helps clients transform their offices while achieving ESG objectives through services such as furniture resale, storage solutions, and recycling programmes.

Complementing these sustainability-focused initiatives is Crown Workspace’s proven capability to deliver complex, business-critical projects, including high-security relocations, IT and infrastructure moves, and large-scale workplace transformations. Backed by strong customer satisfaction and industry-leading operational standards, Crown Workspace provides organisations with a trusted partner to navigate workplace change while creating more efficient, sustainable, and future-ready work environments.

“We are honoured to receive both the Gold Award and this special recognition at the HR Vendors of the Year Awards,” said Jeffrey Chong, General Manager, Hong Kong, at Crown Worldwide Group. “The Trinity Champion of Achievement is particularly meaningful as it reflects the consistency of our work and the dedication of our team over the past three years. Hong Kong organisations are rethinking the role of the workplace. Increasingly, our clients are asking how they can create more flexible, sustainable and employee-centric environments while maintaining business continuity. These recognitions reflect our commitment to helping businesses navigate that transformation successfully. We remain focused on delivering secure and sustainable solutions that support our clients’ business goals.”

Building on these latest recognitions, Crown Workspace will continue investing in people, technology, and innovative workplace solutions, helping businesses create workplaces that are resilient, efficient, sustainable, and ready for the future.

For more information, please visit Crown Workspace’s website at crownworkspace.com.

Hashtag: #CrownWorkspace #HRVendors #BestWorkplaceConsultancy

https://crownworkspace.com/hk/

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Crown Workspace

Crown Workspace helps organisations manage workplace change through commercial and specialist relocations, move management, storage, furniture solutions, IT relocation services, and workplace consultancy. Supported by the global capabilities of Crown Worldwide Group, Crown Workspace delivers tailored solutions that minimise disruption, maximise value, and create positive outcomes for businesses, employees, and the environment.

Crown Workspace – Inspiring places and performance​ – www.crownworkspace.com

Ridger Delivers MUX Private AI Deployment to Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors in Hong Kong

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 30 October 2026 – Ridger, an AI infrastructure company, today announced the official delivery of its MUX private AI solution to Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors in Hong Kong. The solution features MIMO, the world’s first AI-native storage system, making Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors the first law firm in Hong Kong Northern Metropolis to deploy it.

Representatives from Ridger, Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors, xFusion, and Fadada’s RicheeAI team attended the delivery ceremony. During the event, Ridger presented the firm with the “Global AI Pioneer Law Firm” certificate in recognition of its forward-looking investment in private AI infrastructure.

The solution brings together AI-native storage and compute infrastructure, a dedicated large language model (LLM) environment, and AI applications tailored to legal workflows. Operating entirely within the firm’s own security perimeter, it marks a significant step toward enabling Hong Kong’s legal profession to harness the productivity of generative AI while safeguarding client data and meeting compliance requirements.

About the Deployment

In space-constrained Hong Kong, Ms. Careen H.Y. Wong, Founding Partner of Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors and Vice President of The Law Society of Hong Kong, set aside room in the Firm’s latest office in the Northern Metropolis for a standard equipment rack, ready for on-premise AI. It is more than a space decision: it reflects her view of the future of legal services—that while harnessing AI to improve efficiency, a firm must retain control of its data and technology boundaries, so that sensitive materials are always properly protected.

Under the engagement, Ridger built a privately owned, independently operable AI foundation for Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors, comprising high-performance storage and data infrastructure optimized for AI workloads, together with a dedicated LLM platform over which the client retains full control of model weights and the inference environment. The platform supports use cases including contract review and risk flagging, legal research and case-law retrieval, large-scale document review in due diligence, drafting and multilingual translation of legal documents, and internal Knowledge Base question answering. It also provides role-based access control, tiered permissions, comprehensive audit trails and content provenance to meet enterprise-grade governance requirements.

Called MUX, the private solution lets the firm begin with no barrier and without capital-intensive build-out or a dedicated server room, scaling on demand; it natively supports Hong Kong’s common law system and integrates seamlessly with existing systems such as email, document management and calendar, embedding AI into lawyers’ daily work. MUX can be ordered directly through Ridger’s website (https://ridger.tech), out of the box.

The delivery reflects the collaboration of legal expertise, AI infrastructure, compute platforms and industry applications: Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors defined the requirements for data confidentiality and on-premise deployment from its actual practice; Ridger provided the end-to-end MUX solution and led its design and integration; xFusion supplied the FusionXpark local AI compute platform and technical support; and Fadada provided the Richee Legal AI Agent Platform, leveraging specialized AI agents and skills to support lawyers in their daily work and improve workflow efficiency. Ridger notes that while an AI model determines capability for a moment, AI infrastructure determines long-term competitiveness.

Why Private AI Matters for the Legal Sector

1. Safeguarding client confidentiality and legal professional privilege

Client materials, transaction documents and dispute information handled by law firms are protected by legal professional privilege (LPP) and strict professional duties of confidentiality. Disclosure to third parties—including public cloud services—may be treated as a waiver of privilege, causing it to be lost and the materials to become disclosable in subsequent proceedings. Private deployment keeps storage, processing and inference entirely within the firm’s own environment, with no disclosure to external providers, preserving privilege and confidentiality at source.

2. Embedding data sovereignty and regulatory compliance

The solution aligns with Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (Cap. 486) and is designed with reference to the Privacy Commissioner’s “Checklist on Guidelines for the Use of Generative AI by Employees” and the “Model Framework on AI: Personal Data Protection,” as well as The Law Society of Hong Kong’s 2024 position paper on the impact of AI on the legal profession and the Manifesto on “Legal Ethical Code of Conduct Regarding the Deployment of AI.” It embeds the principles of lawfulness, transparency, traceability, interpretability, security and appropriate human oversight into a unified AI governance framework.

For a firm handling cross-border work, the same private environment also addresses the requirements of the major jurisdictions: for Mainland China, it aligns with the Personal Information Protection Law, the Data Security Law and data-export mechanisms such as security assessments and standard contracts; for Europe, it maps to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and standard contractual clauses; for the United States, it meets the confidentiality and competence duties under the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Formal Opinion 512 on generative AI. Because data always remains within the firm’s own perimeter, the firm can confidently meet local data-confidentiality and regulatory expectations wherever its clients are based.

3. Eliminating the hidden risk of “shadow AI”

Where a firm offers no convenient, approved AI tool, individual lawyers may turn to consumer-grade public chatbots for work, creating “shadow AI” that sits outside IT and compliance visibility—unapproved, unlogged and unaudited, with unknown data flows and no clear accountability. MUX channels that demand into a single, visible, auditable controlled environment, giving lawyers the efficiency they want while bringing every use under the institution’s governance and oversight.

4. Keeping institutional knowledge within the firm

The case law, templates and practical know-how accumulated by a firm are core competitive assets. A private platform continuously refined on the firm’s own corpus keeps these assets within the institution and compounds their value over time, rather than depositing them with an external vendor.

5. Ensuring control and business continuity

Private deployment insulates the firm from external API changes, model versioning, service outages or shifts in vendor strategy, giving it full control over capabilities, upgrade timing, cost and availability — a foundation for durable, long-term AI adoption.

Executive Quotes

“For industries built on trust and confidentiality, such as the law, the value of AI should never come at the price of data sovereignty,” said Ray Hu, General Manager Asia-Pacific Region of Ridger. “Private deployment lets a firm turn generative AI into auditable, governable and sustainable productivity without crossing confidentiality lines. We are proud to set this benchmark with Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors”

Ray Hu, General Manager Asia-Pacific Region, Ridger

“In Hong Kong, office space is scarce and precious, but data sovereignty is worth setting aside a place for. Building our own AI infrastructure lets us embrace AI while always safeguarding our clients’ trust and the boundaries of our profession.”

Careen H.Y. Wong, Founding Partner, Shum Wong & Co., Solicitors, Solicitors

Hashtag: #Ridger #MIMO #MUX #PrivateAI #LegalAI #AIInfrastructure #HongKong

https://ridger.tech
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ridger/

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Ridger Company Limited

Ridger is a technology company focused on data and storage infrastructure for the AI era. The company provides private, high-performance AI infrastructure and solutions that enable enterprises to deploy and run large models and AI applications within their own security perimeter. Through its proprietary storage and data management technologies, Ridger helps clients safeguard data sovereignty, security and compliance while fully realizing the business value of artificial intelligence.

By Nilotpal Basu Faced with growing protests over the large-scale electoral malpractices initiated by the supposedly neutral umpire, the Election Commission of India, which clearly favours the BJP, the government and the ruling party have gone berserk. Like a drowning man clutching at straws, the ruling party and its army of social media foot soldiers […]

The article Regime Change Threat And Foreign Funding Are The Bogey Of Ruling Party To Curb Dissent appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By Nitya Chakraborty In just ten days between October 25 and November 3 this year, four national elections were scheduled. Out of these, elections were held in Brazil and Serbia on October 25 and in Israel on October 27. Only on November 3, the midterm elections will be held in the United States. The bitter […]

The article Four Elections In Ten Days: Authoritarianism Is Finally Getting A Backlash appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The greatest mistake Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party can make is to mistake the silence of the streets for the consent of the people. The government may have succeeded in shrinking the space for organised resistance, intimidating critics and making dissent increasingly costly. But political resentment does not disappear simply […]

The article Modi Govt’s Undeclared Emergency Will Have Its Inevitable Outcome appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By Dr. Gyan Pathak Once upon a time people in India exercised their “right to protest” in front of the ruling establishment in New Delhi free of cost, though they still needed government permissions for assembly of people for protest. However, under PM Narendra Modi, it has been abolished altogether with denotification of designated protest […]

The article India’s National Capital Being Turned Into No Protest Zone appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By Ashok Nilakantan Ayers NEW YORK: India’s digital media industry has taken an unusually significant step in challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Twenty-one major news publishers, including media organisations owned by Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, have approached the Supreme Court, arguing that India’s digital privacy legislation could undermine investigative journalism, compromise confidential sources […]

The article Indian Digital Media Challenging Modi Govt’s Privacy Law In Supreme Court Is A Major Step appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

The forecast identifies large language models, which underpin generative AI applications, as an area where China is particularly well positioned to establish leadership. It also anticipates that Chinese companies and research institutions will become at least competitive across other critical technology sectors, potentially reshaping the balance of technological capabilities between Beijing and Washington.

The assessment comes as Chinese AI developers narrow the performance gap with American competitors despite restrictions on access to advanced semiconductors. Improvements in model efficiency, expanding domestic computing infrastructure and competitive pricing have strengthened China’s position in the global market.

Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Robert Lea identified a sharp improvement in Chinese model performance earlier this month. Leading Chinese systems trailed their American counterparts by approximately 3% on benchmark scores, compared with around 9% in May and 15% earlier this year.

That narrowing gap followed the September introduction of DeepSeek’s V4.1 Flash model, which demonstrated further advances in reasoning and computational efficiency. The findings suggest that restrictions on sophisticated American chips have not prevented Chinese developers from improving their systems.

The projections nevertheless remain conditional on technological progress, investment and commercial adoption over the next four years. Competitive performance in individual benchmarks does not necessarily establish overall leadership, particularly when computing capacity, profitability and enterprise deployment are considered.

China’s expanding capabilities are already influencing international adoption patterns. Models developed by DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI have attracted developers seeking alternatives to comparatively expensive proprietary systems offered by American technology companies.

Data from OpenRouter, a platform providing access to multiple AI models, showed Chinese systems gaining substantial shares of usage during 2026. However, the figures represent activity through that platform rather than the entire global market, where direct subscriptions and enterprise contracts remain significant.

Chinese developers have also benefited from distributing models with openly available weights, allowing businesses and programmers to customise systems without depending entirely on proprietary services. This approach has encouraged international experimentation and strengthened adoption among cost-conscious users.

American companies retain important advantages, particularly in advanced semiconductor access, large-scale computing infrastructure and commercial relationships with enterprise customers. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google continue investing heavily in frontier models and the infrastructure required to train increasingly sophisticated systems.

Financial performance illustrates the distinction between technological competitiveness and commercial success. Anthropic disclosed revenue of $16.3 billion for the first half of 2026, compared with $1.2 billion during the corresponding period a year earlier, reflecting strong demand for its enterprise services.

Chinese developers face greater pressure on pricing, with intense domestic competition limiting opportunities to convert growing usage into sustainable earnings. Lower-cost models can accelerate adoption while simultaneously reducing margins available to finance future development.

Semiconductor manufacturing remains another constraint. Washington’s export controls restrict Chinese access to certain advanced processors and manufacturing equipment, although domestic suppliers including Huawei are developing alternatives intended to support national computing requirements.

China’s response increasingly combines domestic chip development with software optimisation. Researchers have demonstrated that improvements in training methods, architecture and inference efficiency can reduce dependence on the most powerful available hardware.

Beijing is also pursuing greater integration between artificial intelligence and telecommunications infrastructure. A three-year programme issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in June established targets for autonomous networks, computing access and specialised AI applications through 2028.

The programme envisages significant breakthroughs in core technologies by 2030, alongside improved coordination between communications networks, computing resources and intelligent services. Its objectives complement broader efforts to establish domestic technological capabilities.

Regulatory developments could influence the international availability of Chinese technology. Authorities proposed export restrictions this month covering 23 categories of AI technology, including language models, autonomous agents, chip designs and computing clusters.

The draft measures would potentially subject transfers of certain model weights, source code and advanced technologies to government approval. Their final scope and implementation remain undetermined.

China’s Ministry of Commerce has presented the proposals as part of a wider effort to regulate strategically sensitive technology transfers. The consultation also covers technologies beyond artificial intelligence, reflecting the government’s expanding attention to intellectual property and national security.

For overseas developers using Chinese models, the eventual rules could affect access to advanced systems and associated technical resources, depending on the restrictions adopted and the thresholds applied to particular technologies.

The proposed overhaul would expand investment opportunities for pension funds while maintaining safeguards for retirement savings. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) is examining changes to the framework that determines how contributions are allocated across government securities, corporate bonds, equities and alternative investments.

The exercise comes as the regulator reassesses investment restrictions that have traditionally favoured highly rated debt and relatively conservative portfolios. Greater flexibility could channel additional institutional capital towards companies, infrastructure projects and investment vehicles that currently face restrictions on accessing pension money.

No final decision has been announced on the proposed changes, and the precise investment limits, eligibility requirements and implementation timetable remain subject to regulatory consideration.

The authority established a Strategic Asset Allocation and Risk Governance committee in January to undertake a comprehensive examination of investment guidelines. Its mandate includes reviewing permissible asset classes, portfolio diversification, valuation practices, liquidity management and safeguards against excessive risk concentration.

The committee has also been tasked with comparing the pension system’s investment architecture with international practices and recommending adjustments that reflect changing domestic financial markets.

One area under examination concerns the credit quality of debt securities eligible for pension investment. Existing regulations impose rating requirements designed to protect subscribers against defaults and deterioration in the financial condition of borrowers.

Relaxing some restrictions could expand demand for corporate bonds beyond the highest-rated issuers, potentially improving financing opportunities for companies that struggle to attract long-term institutional investors.

Such changes would nevertheless expose pension portfolios to additional credit risks. Lower-rated securities generally offer higher yields to compensate investors for greater uncertainty over repayment, making effective credit assessment and portfolio supervision particularly important.

Alternative investments represent another area of potential expansion. These can include infrastructure investment trusts, real estate investment trusts, securitised instruments and regulated alternative investment funds, subject to the applicable scheme guidelines.

The existing framework already permits limited exposure to several such instruments. For certain subscriber investment choices, alternative assets are restricted to 5% of the portfolio, illustrating the cautious approach adopted towards less conventional investments.

An expansion would require careful consideration of liquidity, valuation transparency and the ability of pension managers to exit investments when necessary.

The regulator’s review specifically addresses valuation standards for alternative investment funds and strategies for managing assets that cannot readily be sold. These questions are significant because retirement funds must balance long investment horizons against subscribers’ withdrawal requirements.

The possible changes could also affect the corporate bond market, where greater participation by pension funds would provide an additional source of long-term financing.

However, the eventual market impact would depend on the permitted allocations, the credit standards adopted and investment decisions made by individual fund managers. Regulatory permission would not necessarily translate into immediate purchases of newly eligible securities.

The pension system has accumulated substantial assets as contributions from government employees, corporate workers and individual subscribers have increased.

Government figures put National Pension System assets under management at approximately ₹15.95 lakh crore at the end of March 2026. The separately administered Atal Pension Yojana held approximately ₹51,400 crore.

The scale of these savings makes investment policy an important consideration for both financial market development and retirement security.

Existing guidelines distinguish between government and non-government subscribers, with different investment patterns and restrictions applying to particular schemes.

Non-government subscribers can exercise greater control over their portfolios through available investment choices, while default arrangements for government employees operate under prescribed allocation rules.

The authority has already demonstrated its willingness to broaden eligible investments within established safeguards.

A regulatory circular issued in May permitted pension funds to purchase rupee-denominated bonds issued by the New Development Bank, adding the institution to an existing list of eligible multilateral lenders.

That amendment retained the applicable minimum AA credit rating requirement and maturity conditions, underscoring the distinction between expanding eligible securities and lowering credit standards.

The regulator’s broader review also covers performance benchmarks, accountability mechanisms and asset-liability management practices. These determine how investment results are assessed and whether portfolio risks remain compatible with long-term pension obligations.

The committee’s mandate further includes examining concentration limits, operational risks and sustainability considerations within pension investment decisions, alongside measures intended to strengthen oversight of participating fund managers.