News related to
trading

Empowering SMEs to Expand Globally

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 4 September 2026 – Ping An Digital Bank (International) Limited (“Ping An Digital Bank”) has launched Purchase Order Financing product that specifically designed for cross-border e-commerce businesses, becoming the first digital bank in Hong Kong to offer dedicated factoring financing solution to export cross-border e-commerce merchants. Requiring no traditional collateral, eligible businesses can obtain financing of up to 95% of their accounts receivable based on eligible invoices, meeting their operational needs and enabling SMEs to take an important step toward global expansion.

Mr. Thomas Tung, Chief Business OfficerofPing An Digital Bank, said, “As the Hong Kong’s first digital bank dedicated to SMEs, Ping An Digital Bank has always been committed to supporting businesses and driving transformation in the trade finance ecosystem through financial technology. By harnessing years of experience in exploring the potential of commercial data, and combining multidimensional data spanning trade and finance, we have redefined the credit assessment process to effectively resolve financing bottlenecks for businesses. The launch of Purchase Order Financing seamlessly integrates credit insurance with risk management, providing cross-border e-commerce merchants with more efficient and flexible liquidity support. Moving forward, we will continue to leverage our fintech prowess and synergistic financial services to help SMEs capture global cross-border trade opportunities, serving as a reliable backer for cross-border trading enterprises.”

Ping An Digital Bank’s Purchase Order Financing is designed specifically for cross-border e-commerce businesses operating on open-account payment term With just eligible invoices, businesses can apply for financing with a ratio of up to 95% of accounts receivable, up to USD 5 million and a repayment period of up to 120 days. To address the urgent cash flow needs of cross-border e-commerce businesses, the approval and drawdown process can be completed as fast as T+1 business day. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on financial statements and collateral, Ping An Digital Bank innovatively utilises real-time sales data from cross-border buyers to gain insights into clients’ actual operational performance, thereby breaking through the cumbersome constraints of traditional credit assessment. The product architecture directly aligns with supply chain liquidity needs, empowering clients to deploy capital with flexibility and mitigate cash flow pressures with ease.

Looking ahead, Ping An Digital Bank will continue to deepen the application of data analytics and financial technology, driving product innovation to empower trade businesses to achieve digital transformation and business upgrades. The Bank remains dedicated to refining its one-stop digital financial ecosystem, spanning business account opening, foreign exchange transactions, cross-border settlement, and flexible credit facilities—delivering holistic support for enterprise operational challenges, facilitating global expansion, and acting as a dedicated and trusted partner for SMEs growing on the international stage.

Hashtag: #平安數字銀行 #PingAnDB #採購貿易融資 #PurchaseOrderFinancing

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

Ping An Digital Bank

Ping An Digital Bank (International) Limited (“Ping An Digital Bank,” “PingAnDB”) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lufax Holding Ltd (“Lufax”) (SEHK: 6623; NYSE: LU) and a member of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (“Ping An”) (SEHK: 2318; SSE: 601318). Ping An Digital Bank was granted a banking licence by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in May 2019 to offer retail banking and business banking services. Backed by Ping An’s advanced technology, Ping An Digital Bank is elevating banking experience, serving customer in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area, establishing itself as Ping An Group’s comprehensive financial platform in Hong Kong.

YUNNAN, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 3 September 2026 – The Dounan Flower Market in Kunming, southwest China’s Yunnan Province, is strengthening its position as a leading flower trading hub in Asia, with record annual trading volumes, high-speed auction operations and increasingly efficient international logistics.

The Kunming International Flora Auction Trading Center, a key trading platform within Dounan, begins daily trading at 1:00 p.m. Buyers can complete bids within as little as 0.6 seconds as prices decrease on electronic auction screens, enabling large volumes of fresh-cut flowers to be traded rapidly.

The market experienced a significant increase in trading activity ahead of the Qixi Festival, widely regarded as China’s Valentine’s Day. Tens of millions of flower stems were sold to domestic and international markets during the peak trading period.

According to the Kunming International Flora Auction Trading Center, the average price of major fresh-cut flower categories reached 1.1 to 1.3 yuan per stem during the pre-festival period, approximately 15 percent higher than pre-festival levels. Premium flowers recorded substantially higher prices, with high-quality roses reaching nearly 15 yuan ($2.23) per stem.

In 2025, Dounan recorded a trading volume of 15.476 billion fresh-cut flowers, with total transaction value reaching 13.484 billion yuan (approximately $2 billion).

The market currently hosts 3,300 enterprises and more than 15,000 business entities and individual proprietors. Of Dounan’s approximately 70,000 permanent residents, 46,500 are employed in the flower industry.

Approximately seven out of every 10 fresh-cut flowers sold in China originate from Dounan. Its distribution network now reaches markets across China as well as more than 50 countries and regions worldwide.

High-Speed Auction System

Dounan’s auction system is designed to accommodate the highly time-sensitive nature of fresh-cut flowers.

“Field-grown ‘Purple Glow’ (75 percent maturity), 140 stems; field-grown ‘Beloved’ (80 percent maturity), 120 stems; ‘Beloved’ (75 percent maturity), 120 stems…” said Li Qian, a flower auctioneer at the Kunming International Flora Auction Trading Center.

The trading center uses a descending-price auction model, with prices continuously decreasing on electronic screens. Buyers must respond within approximately 0.6 seconds, allowing transactions to be completed rapidly and supporting the high turnover required by the fresh-cut flower industry.

“Since fresh flowers are perishable goods, we use a descending-price auction format. This helps facilitate rapid circulation,” Li said.

The auction process is integrated with sorting, packaging and transportation operations, reducing the time between trading and shipment.

Logistics Network Expands International Reach

Fresh-cut flowers require particularly efficient logistics because their quality is highly sensitive to transportation and storage time.

Tang Minghong, a client manager with the flower logistics division of SF Express Yunnan, said fresh flowers have among the most demanding logistics requirements in the fresh produce sector.

Trading begins in the afternoon, while pickup, packaging and dispatch can be completed as early as 3:00 a.m., allowing flowers to move quickly from auction facilities into domestic distribution networks.

For international shipments, Dounan has established logistics routes to destinations including Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia. Customers in these markets can receive shipments within two days, according to logistics operators.

Strengthening Yunnan’s Global Flower Trade

The combination of large-scale flower production, centralized trading, high-speed auctions and integrated logistics has enabled Dounan to develop a comprehensive supply and distribution network.

The market connects flower growers in Yunnan with buyers and consumers throughout China and overseas, while supporting the expansion of the province’s fresh-cut flower industry into international markets.

With billions of stems traded annually and distribution covering more than 50 countries and regions, Dounan is emerging as an important regional hub for fresh-cut flower trading and distribution, contributing to the international growth of China’s flower industry.

Hashtag: #DounanFlowerMarket #FlowerTrading #Yunnan

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

The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore clarified that The Mineral Boutique Limited was not part of the DNA Brands investigation, as the Hong Kong beauty and wellness company looks to its next phase of growth across Asia

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 2 September 2026 – The Mineral Boutique Limited, the Hong Kong-registered owner of The Mineral Boutique brand and trademarks, welcomes the clarification issued by the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (“CCS”) concerning its investigation into DNA Brands Co Pte Ltd.

In its clarification of 11 August 2026, CCS confirmed that references to The Mineral Boutique concerned specific Singapore outlets operated by DNA Brands, and that The Mineral Boutique Limited was not subject to the investigation. This distinction has subsequently been reflected in updated media reporting.

CCS stated:

“The Mineral Boutique Limited, and any outlets other than those named above trading under The Mineral Boutique brand trademarks, were not subject to this investigation.”

The distinction is important: operating particular retail outlets under a brand name is separate from ownership or management of the underlying brand.

Because the relevant Singapore outlets traded under The Mineral Boutique name, earlier public reporting sometimes conflated operation of those particular outlets with ownership or management of the underlying brand. The CCS clarification allows that distinction to be reflected accurately in the continuing public record.

The Mineral Boutique Limited supports the continued identification of the relevant Singapore outlets where necessary to assist consumers and the CCS refund process. The company has asked publishers only to ensure that the continuing public record accurately distinguishes those DNA Brands-operated outlets from The Mineral Boutique Limited and its wider business.

CCS’s refund scheme identifies the relevant Singapore outlets at Jewel Changi Airport, NEX and Wheelock Place among the outlets operated by DNA Brands. Consumers who may be eligible for the refund scheme can continue to contact the Consumers Association of Singapore (“CASE”) directly.

Building the Next Phase of The Mineral Boutique

With this distinction now reflected in the official record, The Mineral Boutique is focused on its next stage of development.

The Mineral Boutique is a beauty and wellness concept with an established retail and spa presence across Hong Kong and Macau. Its approach brings together mineral-powered skincare, professional treatments, advanced beauty technology and wellness within an integrated customer experience.

The brand has received consecutive recognition from Vogue Hong Kong, including Best Beauty Flash at the 2025 Vogue Hong Kong Beauty Awards and Best Anti-Aging Mask at the 2026 awards.

Kimmy Lee, Chief Commercial Officer of The Mineral Boutique Limited, said:

“The Mineral Boutique will continue to grow across Asia through a more holistic approach that connects skincare, advanced beauty technology, professional treatments and wellness.

“An upcoming collaboration with Paris-based 48 Collagen Café is one example of how we are extending the customer experience beyond traditional beauty retail.

“We remain focused on innovation, trusted partnerships and consistently high standards of service as we build the next chapter of The Mineral Boutique across the region.”

The Mineral Boutique Limited will continue working constructively with media, partners and other stakeholders to ensure the public record remains accurate while advancing its long-term growth strategy across Asia.

Hashtag: #TheMineralBoutique

https://themineralboutique.com
https://www.facebook.com/TheMineralBoutique/
https://www.instagram.com/themineralboutiqueofficial/
https://www.ccs.gov.sg/consumer-protection/legislation-and-guidelines/refund-scheme-for-affected-consumers-of-dna-brands/

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

About The Mineral Boutique Limited

The Mineral Boutique Limited is a Hong Kong-registered company and owner of The Mineral Boutique brand and trademarks.

The Mineral Boutique combines premium skincare, professional treatments, advanced beauty technology and wellness experiences, with an established retail and spa presence across Hong Kong and Macau.

Founder Jack Ma bought more than HK$600 million worth of Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares over consecutive trading days, while chairman Joe Tsai and chief executive Eddie Wu together purchased more than HK$200 million of stock. The buying helped shares recover modestly after the placement triggered their sharpest setback in months, but the stock remained well below levels preceding the deal.

Alibaba priced 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each, raising HK$80 billion, or about $10.2 billion. The price represented an 8.4% discount to the August 21 Hong Kong close of HK$123 and increased the company’s outstanding share count by roughly 3.7%.

Hong Kong-listed shares slumped 8.5% on August 24, closing at HK$112.50 after trading as low as HK$110.10. They recovered 1.5% to HK$114.20 on Tuesday as purchases by senior executives became known, leaving them still more than 7% below the price immediately before the placement was announced.

The transaction has become a test of whether investors will continue financing increasingly expensive AI expansion despite the near-term pressure it places on earnings and cash generation. Alibaba has earmarked all net proceeds for its full-stack AI capabilities, covering computing infrastructure, chips, models and other technologies required to expand its cloud and generative AI businesses.

Demand for the offering itself was strong. Investor orders reached roughly $28 billion, making the placement almost three times subscribed. Sovereign wealth funds and long-only institutional investors accounted for a sizeable portion of allocations. The deal ranks as the largest primary follow-on share offering by a Hong Kong-listed company.

The discomfort instead centres on the scale and timing of Alibaba’s capital requirements. The company spent close to $10 billion on capital expenditure during the three months through June, an increase of about 75% from a year earlier. Net profit dropped about 75%, while free cash flow turned into an outflow of roughly $6.6 billion.

Alibaba has already deployed almost half of the 380 billion yuan it pledged last year to spend on AI and cloud infrastructure over three years. Management has argued that rapidly growing demand justifies accelerating investment and has shortened its expected payback period for AI expenditure to about two-and-a-half years from three years.

That argument is supported by Alibaba Cloud’s accelerating expansion. Revenue from the cloud business has been growing strongly, helped by demand for AI-related products, while the company continues to build computing capacity overseas. Alibaba Cloud this month opened a third data centre in South Korea, taking its network to 104 availability zones across 30 regions.

Its Qwen family of large language models has also strengthened Alibaba’s position among leading Chinese AI developers. New iterations have improved performance in coding, reasoning and agent-based tasks, helping the company compete with models from domestic rivals and leading US technology groups.

Investors nevertheless face a difficult balance between the longer-term AI opportunity and the immediate financial cost. Expensive processors, servers, data centres and networking equipment require large upfront commitments, while competition is pushing model providers towards lower prices. Alibaba is simultaneously spending heavily on quick commerce and other consumer businesses, adding pressure to margins.

The share sale has also revived scrutiny of capital allocation. Alibaba spent years repurchasing billions of dollars of its own shares, only to issue new equity at a sizeable discount as AI spending accelerated. Although the company still has substantial cash resources, investors have questioned why such a large equity raising was preferable to greater use of its balance sheet or debt financing.

The London-headquartered banking group said it will help qualifying customers integrate HKDAP into financial and commercial operations. Planned applications include money-market fund subscriptions, settlements with asset managers, transfers between entities within the bank’s international network and cross-border payments.

The move gives HKDAP a major banking distribution channel less than two weeks after Anchorpoint began its limited institutional rollout on August 12. The stablecoin, whose name stands for HKD At Par, is designed to maintain a one-to-one value with the Hong Kong dollar and is currently available through a controlled beta programme.

Standard Chartered is the majority shareholder in Anchorpoint, which was established with HKT and Animoca Brands. The venture received one of Hong Kong’s first stablecoin issuer licences in April, alongside HSBC, following the introduction of the territory’s Stablecoins Ordinance in August 2025.

Standard Chartered’s role as distributor is distinct from Anchorpoint’s function as issuer. Under Anchorpoint’s business-to-business-to-consumer model, authorised distributors provide access to the token after conducting customer onboarding and know-your-customer checks. That structure is intended to connect regulated tokenised money with banks, exchanges, asset managers, companies and, eventually, individual users.

Access remains restricted during the beta stage to corporates and professional investors. Anchorpoint aims to broaden availability to retail users as early as the end of 2026, subject to operational and market readiness.

HKDAP currently operates on the Ethereum mainnet. Its reserves are held under a trust arrangement for token holders, with Standard Chartered Trustee acting as trustee. The token does not pay interest and is not positioned as an investment product. Instead, it is designed as digital cash for payments, settlement and movement of funds.

Early activity remains deliberately limited. Anchorpoint disclosed circulation of HK$522,000 and transaction volume of HK$658,160 as of August 19, with reserve assets of about HK$1.62 million. Issuance over the preceding 30 days totalled HK$524,130, while HK$4,170 had been redeemed. The small amounts reflect the controlled institutional testing phase rather than a mass-market launch.

The distribution agreement nevertheless represents an important step towards commercial use. Standard Chartered plans to introduce additional HKDAP applications over the coming month, expanding beyond experiments into transactions that could demonstrate whether regulated stablecoins can reduce settlement times and connect conventional banking infrastructure with blockchain-based markets.

The bank has been accelerating its digital-asset strategy across several areas. It already provides institutional trading in deliverable spot Bitcoin and Ether, has expanded digital-asset custody services and has developed blockchain-based settlement and collateral arrangements. In July, it also launched integrated institutional access to Circle’s USDC minting and redemption infrastructure.

Standard Chartered’s scale could give HKDAP a distribution advantage. The group operates across 55 markets and reported total assets of about $993.4 billion at the end of June 2026, up from roughly $920 billion at the end of 2025. First-half operating income reached a record $11.6 billion, while pre-tax profit rose to $4.8 billion.

Hong Kong’s regulated stablecoin experiment is taking shape cautiously. The monetary authority has imposed capital, reserve-management, redemption, governance, anti-money-laundering and risk-management requirements on licensed issuers, seeking to distinguish supervised fiat-backed tokens from the less regulated stablecoins that dominate global cryptocurrency trading.

HSBC, the other initial licensed issuer, is preparing its own Hong Kong dollar stablecoin for launch during the second half of 2026. The entrance of two globally significant banks places Hong Kong among the jurisdictions attempting to develop regulated alternatives to dollar-denominated tokens such as USDT and USDC, which account for the overwhelming majority of global stablecoin activity.

HKDAP’s first commercial targets centre on areas where settlement speed can offer measurable benefits. Tokenised investment products can potentially be subscribed to and redeemed using programmable money without waiting for traditional banking hours. Cross-border corporate transactions and intragroup treasury transfers could similarly move continuously while maintaining a direct link to regulated fiat reserves.