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U.S. REGULATORS ARE CONSIDERING ELIMINATING BIG BANKS' RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVE THEY DO NOT TRADE ON THEIR OWN ACCOUNT - SOURCES

U.S. REGULATORS ARE ALSO CONSIDERING MAKING IT CLEARER WHICH TYPES OF FUNDS BANKS ARE BANNED FROM INVESTING IN - SOURCES

Your trip through the airport or train station may soon become a little more crowded — not with people, but with robots, busily scanning and plotting the space so that one day, even more of their cousins can zip around with your luggage and Shake Shack orders.

Here, the mapping company majority-owned by Audi, BMW and Daimler, has entered a robotics partnership with Naver Labs, part of Naver — the company that created and spun out the messaging app Line, to expand autonomous indoor mapping coverage: Naver Labs will be using its robots, its image-recognition and its indoor mapping tech to help build 3D indoor maps for the Here platform, specifically of high-traffic spots like airports and train stations.

Here tells me that the first indoor maps that they will work on together are of airports in Korea, where Naver is headquartered, before expanding to other markets and venues.

The collaboration will start off with Here using Naver Labs’ M1, a 3D indoor mapping robot that uses laser scanners and cameras, to capture information. Around the airport, another Naver robot — aptly called “Around” — will circulate to keep information updated. These maps in turn will be sold on to companies that are building apps for autonomous services and consumers to use when in the venues.

While a lot of 3D mapping services has been building detailed databases of outdoor spaces — not just for mapping apps but anything that might need location-based information, such as an immersive game — the focus for companies like Google, Apple, and Here has expanded indoors, too — for those games, for navigation apps, but also to fill the need of all autonomous, moving devices to have accurate information about the spaces in which they operate: think beyond mobile apps to self-driving luggage and caddies or other logistical and location-based features.

In January, Here announced the acquisition of Micello — which had built up both a database of and platform for building indoor maps — also to further this effort.

Here and Naver are not disclosing the financial terms of the deal “yet”, a spokesperson said. So it’s unclear if Naver will invest in Here, or vice-versa, as part of the deal.

Here already has other tech companies strategically investing in it alongside those big three carmakers: last year, Intel revealed it was putting an undisclosed amount into the company to take a 15 percent stake, and other shareholders include Pioneer, Continental and Bosch . But an attempt by Navinfo, Tencent and GIC to take a 10 percent stake was quashed by the US government over security concerns.

Rivals have criticised Here for being built on a lot of legacy IP — it got its start years ago as Navteq — that is in need of better updating. While its automaker owners clearly have a strong route for doing that outdoors — in addition to satellite imagery, there are their vehicles themselves, which can be used to ingest as well as use location data — this is a sign of how Here plans to fill the gap indoors.

“Our collaboration with Naver Labs supports Here Technologies’ strategy to provide world-class mapping and location services both indoors and outdoors,” said Edzard Overbeek, CEO of Here, in a statement. “We’re excited to leverage advanced robotics technology in the development of indoor maps, and look forward to exploring further collaboration opportunities with Naver in the future.”

For Naver, it will mean an expansion of its business outside of its region, diversification that its tried with mixed success up to now.

“Together with Here Technologies, Naver Labs looks forward to bringing the capabilities of our scalable and semantic indoor mapping technology (SSIM) to the global market,” said Chang Song, CEO of Naver Labs.

Unexpectedly severe slowdown leaves index near zero-growth level, hitting mining shares

China’s official gauge of manufacturing activity suffered its largest fall since 2011 in February, an unexpectedly sharp slowdown that left it near the zero-growth level.

The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday dropped to 50.3, down a point from January and the largest fall in more than six years. The fall marked the gauge’s nearest brush with the 50-point mark that separates growth from contraction since August 2016.

The figure was stark enough to unnerve European-listed mining stocks, which depend upon China for a significant part of their revenues.

Mining stocks took the biggest toll on London’s FTSE 100 in morning trade, with losses of more than 2 per cent for Rio Tinto, Glencore, BHP Billiton and Anglo American. The Stoxx mining index, which tracks the sector across the region, fell 2.3 per cent against a decline of just 0.3 per cent for the Europe-wide Stoxx 600.

A median forecast from economists polled by Reuters ahead of the PMI data had predicted only a fractional slowdown: none of the 28 forecasts for February had pencilled in a reading below 51 for the gauge, which is based on a survey of larger and predominantly state-run companies.

China’s statistics bureau attributed the slowdown to the lunar new year holiday, when migrant workers return to their home villages and output typically dips. In 2017 the holiday stretched from the end of January to early February, while this year’s holiday fell entirely in February, making for an unfavourable comparison.

However, the downward move was outsize for the usually incremental series, marking the sharpest fall since a 1.4 point drop in late 2011 that pushed the gauge into contractionary territory.

“The lower PMI readings for February may be partly due to Chinese new year, since seasonal adjustments may not fully iron out the impact in year-to-year shifts in the timing of the holiday,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics. “But even if we account for such volatility by averaging across the first two months of the year, the data still point to a clear slowdown in early 2018.”

Betty Wang, senior China economist for ANZ, suggested authorities’ crackdown on heavy polluters “also played an important role in dampening the headline numbers on top of the holiday effect”. But she added that while the drive’s impact on manufacturing activity would probably last for another couple of months, it was unlikely to have an impact on policy direction.

A variety of measures pointed to softer expansion, with a sub-index for growth in manufacturing output down almost 3 points at 50.7, while that for new orders fell 1.6 points to 51. A sub-index for export orders fell half a point to 49, signalling contraction in foreign demand.

Meanwhile, a gauge that tracks factory gate prices fell 2.6 points to 49.2, signalling the first instance of producer price deflation since June 2017 ending a seven-month rising streak.

China’s official non-manufacturing PMI was also down in February, dropping almost one point to 54.4 — a four-month low. A key sub-index for services sector growth fell 0.6 points to 53.8, while that for construction dropped 3 points to 57.5, suggesting softer growth was not limited to factories in February.

The next signpost for China’s manufacturers will be Thursday’s Caixin-Markit manufacturing PMI, an independent gauge that focuses on smaller, privately owned manufacturers and acts as a cross-check on the official series.