It’s been a rough month for HSBC in the UK.
First, in January, the bank’s CEO, Noel Quinn, and its chief compliance officer, Colin Bell, were asked to appear before the foreign affairs committee of Britain’s Parliament to account for HSBC’s support of a repressive security law imposed by authorities in Beijing on Hong Kong six months earlier.
Then, earlier this month, the London-headquartered bank was taken to court in the UK by Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, who is fighting a US extradition request from Canada.
But in a ruling today (Feb. 19), the UK High Court of Justice spared HSBC from having to get further embroiled in the case, which has become a symbol of China’s increasingly fraught relations with Western democracies.
February 10, 2021
Hit Chinese video streaming site Bilibili, once seen as a haven for subcultures like niche animation
, has been making strides towards becoming a mainstream platform in recent years. But it is now facing a substantial backlash from some of its female users and brand partners, which accuse it of tolerating misogynistic content.
Founded in 2009, Bilibili has evolved from an online hub for anime, comics, and games (ACG) content to a YouTube-esque service that also offers mobile games and live broadcasting. The company went from a little-known website to a platform dubbed “the nearest thing China has to YouTube.” The Nasdaq-listed platform had around 197 million monthly active users in the third quarter last year, an increase of more than 50% from 2019
Marseille. Netflix said that 70 million subscribers watched at least 2 minutes of
Lupin within its first month on the platform. It’s not just Netflix; “
The Bureau,” Éric Rochant’s poignant spy series, is on Amazon, and it’s become a global success, with several remakes in the works.
The quality of French television shows has gone up, while streaming platforms have “played a major role in showcasing foreign series, boosting the appetite of global audiences for local shows, and maximizing their exposure around the world,” Olivier Wotling, director of fiction for Arte, told Variety.
Netflix especially has bet a lot into the French market. It is working on 20 new French series and movies, and just opened its first office in Paris. It’s a good investment for the streaming service, which in a recent letter to shareholders (pdf) laid out a strategy of developing original foreign-language shows with wide appeal: As Adam Epstein reports, at least 87% of