Biz Buzz: HSBC to unveil equities platform

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British banking giant HSBC shut down its local stock brokerage business decades ago (when there was an exodus of foreign houses), but because equities is an asset class that ultra-wealthy clients need to have in their portfolio, it will soon enable the online trading of stocks—not local but global equities.

“We’re introducing online equity trading capability in the Philippines, which is also going to be quite a competitive differentiator that we will be introducing to the market,” Singapore-based Kai Zhang, HSBC head of wealth and personal banking in South Asia and Southeast Asia, recently said.

This is part of efforts to build the local capability of HSBC to serve affluent clients, leveraging its global network and research strength to give them access to liquid markets overseas.

Its primary trading hubs include London, New York and Hong Kong.

“You will hear more about it,” Zhang said. —Doris Dumlao-Abadilla

‘AllTV Patrol’ and more

On Monday, ABS-CBN’s flagship news program TV Patrol made its return to channel 2—which is now being operated by tycoon Manuel Villar’s Advanced Media Broadcasting System (AMBS) under ALLTV—four years after the Lopez-led broadcaster lost its free TV franchise.

“AMBS and ABS-CBN have agreed to work together to deliver news and entertainment programming on ALLTV to serve our audiences with relevant information and timeless Filipino classics for their enrichment and enjoyment,” the companies said in a joint statement sent to Biz Buzz.

But the excitement doesn’t end here. The Villar-led company, to recall, has the license to air the Kapamilya network’s old “teleseryes.”

ALLTV is now playing some of ABS-CBN’s classic TV series and more shows are scheduled to be aired as well following TV Patrol.

Now, the question is: Which of your favorite ABS-CBN TV series will have its rerun via ALLTV? Let’s see! —Tyrone Jasper C. Piad

Healthway info system coming up

The plans of the Zobel family’s Healthway Medical Network won’t stop at just raking in 10,000 patients this year at its newly opened cancer specialty hospital.

Like the rest of us out here, conglomerate Ayala Corp.’s hospital and clinic arm will be leveraging on technological advancement to improve both their doctors’ and patients’ experiences.

Healthway Medical president and CEO Jaime Ysmael recently announced that they were developing an integrated network that would serve as a repository of patient information across all its hospitals.

“We’re actually investing in a hospital information system, an electronic medical record system that is unified across the entire group,” Ysmael said during a media tour of Healthway Cancer Care Hospital (HCCH), the country’s first cancer specialty hospital that is located within Arca South in Taguig City.

The more than 250 doctors of HCCH also have patients in other hospitals across the Metro, and Ysmael explained that the unified record system would no longer require patients to register again when they go to Healthway’s other facilities.

“It can be accessed by doctors who also employ a different model of care in a cancer hospital,” Ysmael added.

Apart from HCCH, Healthway Medical also has inpatient and outpatient facilities in Batangas, Bulacan, Iloilo, Laguna, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, and Cebu.

AC Health, which operates HCCH and the Ayala group’s other hospitals, said they planned on taking in at least 10,000 patients in the Taguig facility by the end of the year.

They have already passed the 400-patient mark, and they are hoping that aside from aggressive information campaigns, this hospital information system could further push them forward. Abangan! —Meg J. Adonis