COLOMBO, SRI LANKA – Media OutReach – 26 July 2021 – edotco Group Sdn. Bhd. (edotco), the leading regional integrated telecommunications infrastructure services company, today strengthened its commitment in Sri Lanka with the appointment of Gayan Koralage, as the Acting Country Managing Director of edotco Sri Lanka.

Gayan Koralage has been appointed as the Acting Country Managing Director of edotco Sri Lanka.

With this new leadership edotco intends to play a more aggressive role in creating a digitally inclusive Sri Lanka through enhancing the country’s telecommunications infrastructure and accelerating the deployment of next generation telecom infrastructure solutions including multipurpose street poles and power systems for telecom sites. “We have successfully deployed over 300 multipurpose lamp poles in the country, strengthening the nation’s connectivity and capacity needs. We understand that a stable and reliable connection is key to ensuring steadfast digital economy, especially in this new normal and we are focused on uncovering new and innovative ways to further ensure the people of Sri Lanka have the best telecommunications infrastructure”. said Gayan, who is also the Director for Strategy at edotco Group.

“We not only intend to extend our next generation infrastructure services and solutions in the country but will also focus on upskilling and developing our talent and investment into research and development in alternative tower designs and materials, and innovative power systems including long lasting next generation batteries and green power solutions to adapt to the ever-evolving industry needs and the to preserve the carbon emission of the country. We are also moving towards being a data driven organization, where processes and decisions are made based on analytics and insights for quicker, better and cost-effective outcomes including finding ideal location for a street poles and providing better network uptime. A newly created Business Innovation and Digitalization department at the Group will be driving business analytics, data and enterprise architecture throughout the organization to enable this and more in the near future” he added.

edotco Sri Lanka pioneered the smart city multipurpose street furniture in Sri Lanka and has since deployed a total of 300 units across the country. The company intends to continue deploying an extensive street furniture network moving forward to cater to both urban and rural connectivity needs throughout the country. With an ongoing BOI commitment of USD55 million, the company plans to deploy over 1,000 street furniture units and over 3000 energy sharing systems across the country, aligning to the Government’s Vision 2025 digitalization aspiration.

Gayan is a founding member of edotco Group, joined in 2013 and responsible for long term strategy, pricing and commercials, analytics and new market entrance initiatives. Under this dual role, he will also take on the responsibility of further growing the two main business pipelines in Sri Lanka, building next generation 5G ready multipurpose street furniture and power systems for better network uptime and quality service delivery. His previous experiences include Telekom Malaysia International and Axiata Berhad.

About edotco Group

Established in 2012, edotco Group is the first regional integrated telecommunications infrastructure services company in Asia, providing end-to-end solutions in the tower services sector from tower leasing, co-locations, build-to-suit, energy, transmission and operations and maintenance (O&M).

edotco Group operates and manages a regional portfolio of over 34,100 towers across core markets of Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines and Laos. edotco strives to deliver outstanding performance in telecommunications infrastructure services and solutions. Its state- of-the-art real-time monitoring service, echo, has driven significant improvements in field operations while maximising operational efficiencies in terms of battery, energy and fuel consumption for telecommunications infrastructure.

edotco Group was awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2021 Asia Pacific Telecoms Tower Company of the Year Award for its demonstrated exemplary business growth and performance in Southeast Asia.

For more information, visit www.edotcogroup.com

#edotcoGroup

Bringing Direct Resort Investment and Enjoyment Deals to Everyday Investors.

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 26 July 2021 – LABS Group, an end-to-end blockchain property investment platform, has successfully raised $3,650,000 for Kunang Kunang Resort. Kunang Kunang Glamping Resort is the world’s first-ever community-owned project fractionalized into Rewarding Timeshare (RTS) NFTs, transforming the way investors build their diversified portfolio, with access to diverse assets, low transaction costs and the ability to trade 24/7.

An upcoming auction will supply 1095 RTS-NFTs, with each day of the calendar year represented by 3 RTS-NFTs. Interested parties will be able to purchase RTS-NFTs with lower entry barriers and a wealth of benefits.

By fractionalizing Kunang Kunang Resort, LABS Group makes resort and hotel investment available for everyone. As quoted by Yuen Wong, the CEO of LABS Group:

“LABS is a digitised real estate investment ecosystem powered by blockchain. With that, we make real estate investment possible for everyday investors. We could bring deals directly to everyday investors, cutting out the middlemen to bring extra value. Furthermore, LABS has made cross-border real estate investment easy, and has carried out all the due diligence for our investors.”

The RTS-NFT Auction

Kunang Kunang project’s newly revamped auction will commence from July 26th, 2021. Bidders can participate through two methods: the auction or an immediate purchase.

The auction will last for 7 days starting from July 26th at 1PM UTC. Interested bidders can bid for their desired RTS-NFTs at the Refinable Marketplace, where 365 RTS-NFTs will be available at the starting price of $3333 USDT.

730 RTS-NFTs will be reserved for immediate purchase from July 26th 1PM UTC onwards with a starting price of $3999 USDT. Seasonal prices could vary however, as RTS-NFTs from July to September are fixed at $4333 USDT while RTS-NFTs that fall on special days are fixed at $4666 USDT. To understand more regarding the project, visit here.

RTS-NFT Benefits and Rewards

RTS-NFT owners are entitled to a miscellany of benefits. This includes 30 years of staying rights, freedom to swap, trade and more. Additionally, the first 100 bidders can win a 200 USDT rebate by placing any first bid on the RTS-NFT auction.

All RTS-NFT holders also receive a special NFT holder privileges package during their stay at the resort on their RTS-NFT date, including:

• Limousine transport to Kunang Kunang Resort
• In-room welcome treats
• Set Breakfast for two
• 50% off on any onsite consumption
• 20% off on any off-site consumption (i.e. excursion, local tours)

Upcoming Pipeline and Development Plan

Kunang Kunang Resort is in preparation for its opening in February. LABS Group will also continue to move forward with plans to expand their real estate business with more resorts globally, this includes prospective plans in Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Japan. With determination to spread their success globally, LABS Group will be a spectacle to behold in the coming years.

About LABS Group

LABS Group is a digitized real estate investment ecosystem that is powered by blockchain and the community. The ecosystem, aiming to redefine the real estate investment sector, includes a crowdfunding and trading platform, a collateralized lending platform, and NFT reward solutions on resorts and hotels. Using the LABS platform, developers can easily tokenize and fractionalize their real estate, allowing them to sell or trade it.

Website: https://labsgroup.io/

Telegram: https://t.me/labsgroupio

Twitter: https://twitter.com/labsgroupio

Medium: https://labsgroupio.medium.com/

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/k6wkAvRH

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LabsGroupio/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/labsgroupio/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/labs-group/

#LABSGroup

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach – 26 July 2021 – Chinese state-owned news media has long been criticised as being the government’s “mouthpiece” due to its ties to the Chinese government. Many question the value of news reports they produce because report the information that the government intends to share. Setting aside this stereotypical image, a recent study finds that in terms of business news, even state-owned newspapers provide unique and valuable information to the country’s capital markets.

The study found that the more traditional state-owned media and the newer outlets serve different roles in providing information to financial markets. (Source: iStock)

All news media in China are more or less controlled by the government. The government itself directly operates several official media organisations that espouses the views of the party. The biggest and most influential include The People’s Daily, the largest newspaper in the country, television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV), the news agency Xinhua, English-language daily China Daily and the tabloid Global Times.

However, recent years have seen the emergence of a new breed of media outlets in the country that appear to operate with relatively more editorial leeway, such as Caixin, Jiemian.com, and The Paper. They are still controlled by the state, but have a stronger profit incentive and are established with a clear mandate to attract and serve a broader readership. The news articles they publish often appear to be more critical, and they are seen as being more willing to push the boundaries of reporting in the country, often covering stories that the largest (and state-owned) media companies are unwilling to. Consequently, the news coverage of this new generation of media organisations is generally considered to be more valuable than the stories published on traditional state-owned media. However, according to research, this may not actually be the case.

“People often ignore the fact that state-owned media, thanks to their close links to the government, can provide ‘inside’ market news and information that other news media can’t,” comments Tianyu Zhang, Professor at the School of Accountancy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School.

His research paper Firm News and Market Views: The Informational Role of Official Newspapers in China, co-written with Prof. Joseph Piotroski at Stanford University, Prof. T.J. Wong at the University of Southern California and PhD student Shubo Zhang at CUHK Business School, proposes that old guard state-owned media and their more progressive brethren serve two different roles in providing information to financial markets. In the study, the authors reviewed nearly 3 million articles on domestic corporate news from 100 business newspapers in China from 2000 to 2017.

Different Informational Roles

Prof. Zhang explains that the more traditional state-owned media and the newer outlets are different in terms of acquiring, interpreting and disseminating information and therefore, the two types of media may serve different roles in providing information to the markets.

Typically, the more progressive news organisations tend to focus more on firm-specific reporting. This can help them to gain readers who are interested in inside stories of well-known companies and earn advertising revenue from firms that perhaps would like to be featured in the newspapers. In other words, their news articles would lead to an increase in the supply of information on individual firms, such as the performance of certain companies and their stock prices.

The more traditional state newspapers, on the other hand, are well suited to delivering political directives and policy-related information. Due to their close relationship with governmental units, these big official rags can provide the most precise policy direction and industry trends for corporate news. For instance, the study found that on average, their articles supply 10 percent more news on the general trends of specific industries and markets than semi-independent business newspaper articles. Furthermore, big state-owned newspapers tend to increase their coverage on industry and market news on days when the central government announces new industrial economic policies.

“You must understand that government policy is fundamental to China’s economic growth and investment opportunities. In other words, it wouldn’t hurt to listen to the ‘mouthpiece’ sometimes,” Prof. Zhang comments.

On the other hand, not all conventional state-owned newspapers are equal in terms of reporting policy-related information. According to the study, newspapers owned by the central government level often contain more information on the broader economy than the same type of newspapers owned by local governments. The study explains that this phenomenon shows that newspapers owned by the central government have greater access to future governmental policy directions, wider readership and they appeared to have greater credibility.

However, the study found that during the National Congress of China’s Communist Party – a meeting of top officials which is held every five years and serves to set the country’s national policy goals and to elect its top leadership, both types of newspapers reported an increase in their output of stories related to the macroeconomy to showcase their coverage of the country’s major political event of the year.

Diverging Editorial Stance

Interestingly, contents reported by the two types of newspapers diverged further after President Xi Jinping’s high-profile visit to the big three state-owned media – The People’s Daily, Xinhua and CCTV – in February 2016. During this visit, President Xi ordered news media organisations to “follow the Party’s leadership and focus on ‘positive reporting'”, CCTV reported. The researchers found that after the visit, more editorially progressive newspapers drastically reduced the amount of coverage on the overall economic performance of individual industries and the macroeconomy, whereas the traditional state-owned news media saw a significant surge in their coverage of this type of information.

“What we saw was that the old school state-owned news media organisations aligning themselves with the overall political and propaganda role that the Party set for them in the economy, whereas news media with more independent editorial stances were distancing themselves from this political agenda to focus solely on their businesses interests,” Prof. Zhang explains. “This way, the two types of news media have different roles in providing different types of information for investors.”

The research study is the first to provide evidence that China’s different state-owned news media play an important and complementary role in providing useful information to financial markets. Prof. Zhang and his co-authors suggest future research can look into the way that the market reacts to existing biases in the content of official newspaper articles and whether the market corrects for these known influences.

Reference:

Joseph D. Piotroski, T.J. Wong, Shubo Zhang and Tianyu Zhang. (2019) Firm news and market views:

the informational role of official newspapers in China. Working paper.

This article was first published in the China Business Knowledge (CBK) website by CUHK Business School: https://bit.ly/3i3PPsn.

About CUHK Business School

CUHK Business School comprises two schools – Accountancy and Hotel and Tourism Management – and four departments – Decision Sciences and Managerial Economics, Finance, Management and Marketing. Established in Hong Kong in 1963, it is the first business school to offer BBA, MBA and Executive MBA programmes in the region. Today, CUHK Business School offers 10 undergraduate programmes and 18 graduate programmes including MBA, EMBA, Master, MSc, MPhil and Ph.D. The School currently has more than 4,600 undergraduate and postgraduate students from 20+ countries/regions.

In the Financial Times Executive MBA ranking 2020, CUHK EMBA is ranked 15^th in the world. In FT‘s 2021 Global MBA Ranking, CUHK MBA is ranked 48^th. CUHK Business School has the largest number of business alumni (40,000+) among universities/business schools in Hong Kong – many of whom are key business leaders.

More information is available at http://www.bschool.cuhk.edu.hk or by connecting with CUHK Business School on:

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