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KUALA LUMPUR: SME Bank Group president and chief executive officer (CEO) Datuk Aria Putera Ismail will leave the organisation at the end of his tenure to pursue new opportunities. Group chief corporate strategy officer Datuk Mohammad Hardee Ibrahim will assume the role of acting group president and CEO starting from Sept 3, 2024, the development financial institution said. “Mohammad Hardee brings over 20 years of extensive experience in the financial services industry, specialising in business banking and strategic management. He has served SME Bank in numerous portfolios including treasury, and corporate finance. business banking and most recently, corporate strategy.” it said in a statement today. SME Bank said that under Aria Putera’s six-year leadership, he has paved the way for the bank to fulfil its mandate in supporting and developing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia. This began with redefining its vision and mission and introducing its SMILE core values, it said. In 2019, he introduced the Two-Year Accelerated Programme, a strategic plan to revamp the bank’s business with 27 initiatives focusing on sustainable development goals, asset quality, a comprehensive SME ecosystem, digitalisation and talent development. “SME Bank has shown tremendous improvement in asset quality and financing growth during his tenure, with the gross financing amount recording a 37.6 per cent growth from RM 6.47 billion in 2018 to RM 8.9 billion as at the end- 2023, while the gross impaired rate reduced to 12.5 per cent from from 22.9 per cent,” it said. In addition, the bank said, Aria Putera initiated multiple relief programmes during the global COVID-19 pandemic from October 2o20 to September 2022 to support SMEs and microenterprise in various industries, which benefitted more than 5,000 companies with a total financing of RM9.12 billion. –BERNAMA

TOKYO: Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors is set to join an alliance between Honda Motor and Nissan Motor, creating an auto group with combined sales of more than eight million vehicles, the Nikkei Business Daily says. Mitsubishi Motors, which is 34% owned by Nissan, will work with Honda and Nissan to finalise the details of their partnership, but the three firms intend to standardise in-vehicle software that controls cars, Nikkei said. Mitsubishi Motors declined to comment on the report, while officials at Nissan and Honda were not immediately available for comment. The push comes as Nissan, Japan’s third-biggest automaker, has been steadily losing market share in its two largest markets, the United States and China, which together accounted for half of its global sales in the year to March. Last Thursday, the company slashed its annual outlook after heavy discounting in the United States almost completely wiped out its first-quarter profit. Collaboration could help Japan’s automakers cut costs and beef up to battle tough competition in electric vehicles, dominated by companies like China’s BYD and Tesla. In China, Japanese brands previously were strong but are now up against domestic automakers. — Reuters

Paytm Payments Bank, an associate entity of One97 Communications (OCL), which operates the Paytm brand, has appointed Arun Kumar Bansal as managing director (MD) and chief executive officer (CEO). Bansal is a former IDBI Bank executive. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had approved Bansal’s appointment as the MD and CEO of the payments bank, he communicated on June 20 to IDBI Bank. “With pleasure, I wish to inform you that RBI has approved my appointment as MD and CEO of Paytm Payment Bank. Therefore, I hereby tender my resignation from the service of the (IDBI) Bank,” he said in his resignation letter.– Business Standard.

PARIS and SINGAPORE: Ingenico, the global leader in payment acceptance and services, is pleased to announce the appointment of Anushka Weeratunga as its Regional Managing Director in APAC and a member of the Executive Committee, effective immediately. Anushka, who served as Country Business Leader for the Pacific, has been a driving force of Ingenico’s business growth in the Pacific region over the past three years. Anushka Weeratunga joined Ingenico from one of the leading Australian banks and has an in-depth knowledge of payment ecosystem. Anushka has a proven track record in driving accelerated business growth, strategic business development, transformational change, and new market entry through the leadership of diverse teams. “Anushka’s appointment is a testament to our commitment to nurturing internal mobility and recognizing the exceptional talent within our business. His strategic vision and leadership capabilities have been instrumental in our success in the Pacific, and I am confident that he will bring the same level of dedication and innovation to the APAC region and the Executive Committee,” said Laurent Blanchard, CEO of Ingenico. Please join us in welcoming Anushka Weeratunga to his new role at Ingenico. We are looking forward to the vision and leadership he will bring to our organization.

OpenAI is venturing into a territory long dominated by Google with the selective launch of SearchGPT, an AI-powered search engine with real-time access to information from the internet. The move, announced on Thursday, also places the AI giant in competition with its largest backer Microsoft’s Bing search and emerging services such as Perplexity — a search-focused AI chatbot firm backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and semiconductor giant Nvidia. Shares of Google’s parent company Alphabet ended 3% lower on Thursday, after OpenAI’s announcement. OpenAI said it has opened sign-ups for the new tool, which is currently in the prototype stage and is being tested with a small group of users and publishers. The company plans to integrate the best features from the search tool into ChatGPT in the future. “AI-powered search tools from OpenAI and Perplexity re-affirm search as a content engagement model but pressure Google to be better at its own game,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Kingsley Crane said. Google dominates the search engine market with a 91.1% market share as of June, according to web analytics firm Statcounter. SearchGPT will provide summarized search results with source links in response to user queries, OpenAI said in a blog post. Users will also be able to ask follow-up questions and receive contextual responses. The company will give publishers access to tools for managing how their content appears in SearchGPT results. SearchGPT signals a closer collaboration between publishers and OpenAI, following content licensing agreements with major organizations like Associated Press, News Corp, and Axel Springer. “Newer AI-powered search providers could face challenges of their own, with Perplexity already facing pending legal action from publishers like Wired and Forbes, and Condé Nast,” said Crane. Major search engines have been trying to integrate AI into search since ChatGPT first launched in November 2022. Microsoft, through its early investment, adopted OpenAI technology for its Bing search engine, while Google rolled out AI-powered summaries for the wider public at its developer conference in May. Google did not respond to a Reuters query on the potential impact of SearchGPT on its business. Reuters had earlier reported on OpenAI’s plans around AI search in May. (Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)–Reuters