Day: October 18, 2022

The innovative fractional art investment platform Mintus.com has signed a partnership agreement with Amicorp Group’s wealth management company, Amergeris, opening access to shared ownership of iconic art to the clients of private banks, family offices and wealth managers

LONDON, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Mintus, the fractional art investment platform, today announced its first major partnership in the discretionary fund management and wealth management sector as it seeks to expand its global reach.

Mintus is the first FCA authorised company to launch and scale art fractionalisation in the UK and the partnership with Amergeris Wealth Management (Switzerland) AG, part of Amicorp Group, will significantly expand Mintus’ exposure to investors across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Amergeris Wealth Management (Switzerland) AG, a licensed investment manager, structured the investment products for Mintus.

Launched in Q2 2022, Mintus has created an intuitive and accessible investment platform, backed with industry leading art and financial expertise, that offers investors an innovative way to buy shares and invest in high-quality, difficult to access, multi-million-pound contemporary artworks. Fractional ownership of art, enabled through investing in the shares issued by an investment vehicle which in turn owns the art, provides enhanced portfolio diversification and risk-adjusted returns for investors together with the unique opportunity to invest in some of the world’s greatest paintings at a fraction of their overall value.

Mintus has a pipeline of $150m of investment quality paintings from artists including Andy Warhol, George Condo, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Pablo Picasso, and René Magritte. Qualified Investors can buy shares in a fund that owns the individual paintings directly at Mintus.com. Exposure to a diversified portfolio, made up of all the artwork on the Mintus platform, can also be accessed by investment into the Mintus Art Strategy, an Actively Managed Certificate (AMC) available to wealth managers and financial institutions through its ISIN code.

Amergeris Wealth Management Group AG was established in 2011 and offers specialist investment banking and wealth management to its clients either directly or through Amicorp Group via its global network of offices that include Singapore, Dubai, Zurich, London, Barbados, Curacao and Miami.

This is the first of several planned major partnerships with private banks and other wealth managers to provide their clients with access to shared ownership of exceptional investment grade art and tapping into the ever-increasing drive for portfolio diversification through alternative assets.

Brett Gorvy, Chief Curator at Mintus, commented: “Mintus removes the structural limitations around market access, risk management and the origination process for investors who are new to the art market or art enthusiasts who are priced out from rare, iconic paintings. The platform offers these rare, iconic paintings and the artists on the platform are among the most desirable and sought-after contemporary artists to collect today. Their markets are international and artists on the platform, such as Warhol, are currently experiencing new popular heights as a result of major museum retrospectives and record prices achieved at auction.”

Tamer Ozmen, Founder and CEO of Mintus, said: “These new partnerships are an exciting development in our business. We are implementing our plans to enter new markets globally by partnering with financial institutions, private banks and wealth managers. These partnerships allow qualified and accredited investors to invest alongside experienced financial institutions.”

Remko Van Ekelen, CEO of Amergeris, commented: “We are delighted to partner with Mintus. In this challenging inflationary environment, art investments provide strong portfolio diversification, inflation hedging attributes and strong capital preservation capabilities due to its uncorrelated nature to equities. Mintus’ offering strips out the extra costs and frictions generally associated with investing in art and makes it a very viable alternative asset class for our clients.”

Note to editors:

• Full details of the investment and risks are included in the investment documents available to all qualifying investors who successfully complete the sign-up process with Mintus. Investors’ attention is drawn to the following key risks:

• Liquidity. Shares held by investors are not traded on a recognised investment exchange. Investments are long-term. Mintus will allow secondary transactions in shares through its website in the future as a bulletin board.
• Risk of Loss. All investments in shares involve a high degree of risk and compensation for loss of investment is not available.
• Lack of Diversification. Shares held by investors in an investment vehicle represent interests in a specific, pre- identified artwork that is owned by that particular investment vehicle. The past performance of the art market, a particular artist’s work, or a given artwork is not a reliable indicator of its future performance.

Mintus Trading Limited is Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under firm reference number 942522.

Mobile app launch and expanded student self-expression, accessibility tools drive a more modern, simplified experience on any device

DUBAI, UAE, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ —  Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, today announced an all-new version of the Blackboard Learn mobile application. The new app is underpinned by Learn Ultra’s responsive web design and equipped with all the new features rolling out to Learn Ultra’s desktop version, providing a learning platform with a more personalized experience from any device. The announcement comes as Anthology continues to rapidly advance the development of its flagship learning management system, tripling resources for development and delivering a record number of new features in July.

“Today, we know learning isn’t confined to a classroom or a laptop,” said Jim Chalex, Vice President of Product Management, Teaching and Learning at Anthology. “We’re all-in on delivering a personalized experience for every learner and this new mobile app is just another way we’re empowering students to learn in a way that fits their needs.”

The app was developed relying on client input and combines what were formerly separate student and instructor applications into one version. Learn Ultra was originally built with mobile responsiveness as a cornerstone, distinguishing it from other learning management solutions that are retrofitted into mobile applications. The new mobile experience supports all Learn implementations, but as Anthology accelerates features developed for Learn Ultra, institutions deploying Learn Ultra will gain added  enhancements and upgrades. The result is an app that allows learners and instructors to seamlessly move their learning experience from their desktop to mobile and back again while simplifying the user experience.

“Navigating tests is simple,” said Keegan Macdonald, a college student and member of Anthology’s Student Advisory Council. “The new app makes learning easier with features like the ability to select individual students from class groups, as well as discussion board navigation that just works.”

The new app is part of Learn Ultra’s broader strategy to provide a learning experience tailored to each student and instructor’s needs. Learn Ultra’s self-expression tools, like the ability for learners to record their name pronunciation, are core to the product and critical in fostering a supportive environment. This month, Anthology will continue to expand its self-expression functionality by enabling learners to choose either their given name or an additional name and select how it’s displayed to those in class.

The mobile app experience is also optimized to create more inclusive learning environments for every student and instructor.  Utilizing the Learn Ultra experience with Anthology Ally can improve reading comprehension for all students, particularly for language learners and students with learning differences like dyslexia. Content developed in Learn Ultra is automatically formatted to be mobile responsive and, coupled with Anthology Ally, alternative formats like tagged PDFs, translated versions and audio files allow students to choose content that meets their needs in the moment.

The new Blackboard Learn application can be downloaded on The Apple Store or Google Play and is available now.

Anthology offers the largest EdTech ecosystem on a global scale for education, supporting more than 150 million users in 80 countries. With a mission to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community through Anthology Intelligent Experiences, we help learners, leaders and educators achieve their goals by offering over 60 SaaS products and services designed to advance learning. Discover more about how we are fulfilling our mission for education, business and government institutions at www.anthology.com.

Media contact: Heather Phillips, heather.phillips@anthology.com

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Strategic investment, client involvement accelerate feature delivery as Learn Ultra adoption rises 30%

DUBAI, UAE, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, today announced a 46 percent increase in the number of courses designed using Blackboard® Learn Ultra, and a 30 percent increase in the number of institutions deploying Learn Ultra courses, year over year.

Following the merger with Blackboard, Anthology tripled Learn Ultra development resources and increased opportunities for client feedback in the development process, a strategy that continues to power a rising cadence of new features and enabled the largest Learn Ultra release to-date delivered this July. These new features are accelerating adoption and helping institutions leverage data to better serve students when used alongside new tools like Blackboard Data Reporting.

In just the last six months, institutions in the United Arab Emirates that have selected or upgraded to Learn Ultra include the British University in Dubai and Al-Khawarizmi International College, among numerous others.

“Blackboard Learn Ultra supports a more engaging teaching and learning experience through its intuitive, user friendly interface and ability to connect faculty with students, and vice versa,” said Abdullah Esmat, IT Department System Administrator for Khawarizmi International College. “We’re prepared to support in-person, remote and hybrid learning environments long term because of the flexibility the Learn Ultra offers our institution.”

With a research-informed approach that involves clients throughout the development process, Blackboard Learn Ultra users benefit from significant improvements to the learning experience aligned with the pedagogical preferences of instructors. The most recent releases of Learn Ultra have delivered new enhancements driven by this inclusive process, including:

• An improved and more personalized student test-taking experience, including student visibility into progress during a test, the option to hide the timer to help with test anxiety, filters to accommodate different test taking strategies and reminders about unanswered questions.
• Increased instructor control around how tests and assignments are displayed, like the ability to display one question at a time and prevent backtracking, and more engaging assessment experiences through inline file rendering. New features also increase instructor control over how a test should behave, allowing them to determine when the student can view their submission, instructor feedback and grades.
• Greater flexibility to support student self-expression, including the opportunity to provide a preferred name, record a name pronunciation, and more control over how this information is presented to peers.

In conjunction with accelerating feature development and deployment, Blackboard Data Reporting is now widely available to Learn clients to help institutional leaders tap learner data for actionable insights. Designed to lower the barriers to data-informed decision-making, Blackboard Data Reporting generates reports, dashboards and visualizations that look across all courses, instructors and students. This comprehensive view provides understanding about tool adoption, course design and student engagement, and ultimately enables leaders to build an experience that fuels learner success.

“Anthology’s Blackboard Learn Ultra is so much more than an LMS. When integrated with other core systems on campus, it becomes an essential tool in delivering the insights that institutions need to create more personalized experiences for students, and it will play a critical role in our Anthology iX product vision,” said JD White, Chief Product Officer at Anthology. “We’ve tripled the size of our Learn development team in the last year and are working with universities in more than 70 countries to help them realize its full capabilities. This is just the beginning of what we expect to see ahead.”

Anthology offers the largest EdTech ecosystem on a global scale for education, supporting more than 150 million users in 80 countries. With a mission to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community through Anthology Intelligent Experiences, we help learners, leaders and educators achieve their goals by offering over 60 SaaS products and services designed to advance learning. Discover more about how we are fulfilling our mission for education, business and government institutions at www.anthology.com.

Media contact: Heather Phillips, heather.phillips@anthology.com

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OneCosmo suite allows financial Institutions and fintechs in the region to build a wide range of digital banking capabilities, gaining flexibility and scalability

ABU DHABI, UAE, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — OneConnect Smart Technology (ME) Ltd (OneConnect), the leading technology-as-a-service provider and an associate of Ping An Group, has announced the launch of OneCosmo, a one-stop omni platform for all-in-one digital banking solutions, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was jointly developed with Brazil-based tech company Pismo, one of the fastest-growing banking Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firms.

OneCosmo allows customers to launch financial products in a matter of weeks due to pre-integrated and pre-configured features. It also enables real-time data streaming for greater insight into consumer behaviour through data analysis. OneCosmo is a flexible and microservices-led API driven platform— offering financial institutions the freedom to customise the solutions suite to meet their individual needs. To date, Pismo’s technology used in OneCosmo’s solutions has been utilised by more than 60 million banking customers growing rapidly on a month-on-month basis.

The launch of OneCosmo is the result of a strategic partnership established in April 2022 by OneConnect and Pismo. Leveraging the Pismo next-generation cloud native SaaS platform, OneCosmo’s suite of solutions offers a highly scalable and easily integrable option for banks and financial institutions to build digital banking capabilities. It includes a wide range of services, from digital identity verification and core banking to card issuance, digital wallets, and digital lending. The platform also allows integration across different third-party service providers using highly flexible APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and microservices.

“The digital banking and digital payment market in the UAE will be growing faster than the global average, within the next five  years. Customers have very high expectations of their banks and show a strong appetite for digital banks,” said Vishal Dalal, CEO (North America, EMEA and APAC) at Pismo. “With the partnership between Pismo and OneConnect, we are taking to the market the right technology for helping banks and fintechs offer the digital products their customers want.”

“Following the success of OneCosmo launch in Asia, we are exhilarated that the solution had garnered tremendous interest from the local financial institutions. Now, together with OneConnect’s strategic partner Pismo, we are excited to bring our leading edge technological solutions and professional expertise to the UAE. As the leading Fintech market in the MENA region, along with strong support from the local regulators, the UAE will be a significant market to us.” says Tan Bin Ru, CEO (Southeast Asia) of OneConnect Financial Technology.

BEIJING, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The Communist Party of China (CPC) on Sunday unveiled its blueprint for building a modern socialist China in all respects for the next five years and beyond as the 20th CPC National Congress opened.

The five-yearly meeting is the first national congress of the CPC after its centenary in 2021, when the Party led the Chinese people to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

“From this day forward, the central task of the CPC will be to lead the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in a concerted effort to realize the Second Centenary Goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects and to advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization,” Xi Jinping said in a report at the opening session of the congress.

The theme of the congress is holding high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, fully implementing the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, carrying forward the great founding spirit of the Party, staying confident and building strength, upholding fundamental principles and breaking new ground, forging ahead with enterprise and fortitude, and striving in unity to build a modern socialist country in all respects and advance the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts, Xi said.

Chinese political experts said the theoretical innovation of the CPC showed in the 20th Party Congress has global significance as it offers countries around the world which are seeking modernization an alternative and an example, and in its new journey, China will continue to uphold the great banner of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics with firmness and confidence.

Chinese modernization

Xi expounded on the missions and tasks of the CPC on the new journey of the new era.

The CPC aims to basically realize socialist modernization from 2020 through 2035, and build China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful from 2035 through the middle of this century.

Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, said that “the concept of Chinese modernization was raised for the first time as one of the most important conclusions the CPC made from its past experiences.”

Shen said that as there is no ready-made development path or mode for China to directly copy or imitate, China has finally concluded a Chinese path to modernization after more than a hundred years of exploration and construction since the Revolution of 1911, providing a completely new alternative, a third choice for all developing countries in the world which are searching for or struggling with their development modes with the wish to both realize rapid self-development and maintain sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

Xi underscored the unique features of Chinese modernization, which he said is the socialist modernization pursued under the leadership of the CPC. It contains elements that are common to the modernization processes of all countries, but it is more characterized by features that are unique to the Chinese context.

Chinese modernization is the modernization of a huge population, of common prosperity for all, of material and cultural-ethical advancement, of harmony between humanity and nature and of peaceful development, Xi said.

Analysts said that the Chinese path of modernization is about common prosperity for all, and it will be realized by the peaceful development. From this aspect, it is completely different from Western modernization.

Chinese modernization will be successful together with other nations’ modernization, and it will create chances for other countries to realize their modernization and development, and it will not lecture or force others to accept its ideology. It will not use alliance systems to let other countries to surrender their autonomy or be subject to hegemony, experts noted.

Many foreign journalists shared the same feeling as they highly value the achievements that China gained in the past century, especially the past five to 10 years. They wanted to explore how China accomplished these great missions and how these experiences could help their countries.

Abdurakhmannova Albina, a journalist from CBC TV of Azerbaijan, told the Global Times that the congress is not just important for China, “but also for many other countries around the world too,” and the most impressive part for her is that she learned the CPC has done so much for China and the Chinese people in just the past five to 10 years, and she considers that it is important for her to report this to the people of her country.

David Lopez, a journalist from Colombia’s media El Tiempo, told the Global Times that the congress is a historic event, and it is important for journalists like him to be here to witness this event closely because “we need to let the people from the other side of the world to understand what’s happening here” in China, and “we are interested in [China’s] development, economy and technologies and so on.”

Future tasks and challenges

Xi said that the next five years will be crucial for ensuring that the efforts to build a modern socialist country in all respects get off to a good start.

“Building a modern socialist country in all respects is a great and arduous endeavor. Our future is bright, but we still have a long way to go. We must therefore be more mindful of potential dangers, be prepared to deal with the worst-case scenario, and be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms,” Xi said.

Zhang Xixian, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee in Beijing, told the Global Times on Sunday that “the potential risks that could bring ‘dangerous storms’ would come from the risk of war amid profound changes the world hasn’t seen in the past century and a potential global economic and social crisis, and such as the obstacles for national reunification, as foreign interference to support Taiwan secessionism could bring extreme danger.”

The fundamental reason why China needs to be prepared for the worst-case scenario and even “dangerous storms” is that Chinese modernization will bring challenges to the hegemony which is now dominating the current world order, experts noted.

So as long as China keeps developing itself, and keeps seeking improvement for the livelihood of the Chinese people and puts efforts into offering more public goods, like the Belt and Road Initiative, to other countries which also want win-win cooperation, modernization and peaceful development, the existing hegemony will impose pressures, suppressions and even attacks against it, said analysts.

Xi also stressed modernizing China’s national security system and capacity and safeguarding national security and social stability.

“National security is the bedrock of national rejuvenation, and social stability is a prerequisite for building a strong and prosperous China,” Xi said. “The Party will take coordinated steps to ensure external and internal security, homeland and public security, traditional and non-traditional security, as well as its own security and common security.

BEIJING, Oct. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — “The ‘Two Establishments’ is the Party’s major political achievements,” an official said at a press conference on Monday when briefing on Party building alongside the ongoing 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the country’s most important political event every five years.

The “Two Establishments,” refers to establishing “Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole” and defining “the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

“Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is the latest theoretical results as the Party’s right answer to issues raised by the era and practices,” said Tian Peiyan, deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee.

It also represents the essence of Chinese culture and Chinese spirit, having realized new leap forward of modernizing and adapting Marxism to the Chinese context, according to Tian.

Challenges and solutions for the largest ruling party

With over 96 million Party members as of 2021, the CPC is the largest Marxist ruling party in the world.

Managing such an organization and ruling the world’s largest socialist country with a population of 1.4 billion is full of challenges.

The Party faces tasks from self-governance, reforms and opening-up, market economy and external environment. It is also presented with long-term dangers of lack of drive, incompetence, disengagement from the people, inaction and corruption, Tian noted.

“Nothing can easily bring down a government like corruption, and the fight against corruption is the most thorough form of self-reform,” said Xiao Pei, deputy head of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC Central Committee and vice chairman of the National Supervisory Commission of the People’s Republic of China.

Since the 18th Party congress, the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection have set up 4.648 million cases for investigation, and 25,000 general-level officials as well as over 182,000 county-level officials have been punished.

As corruption jeopardizes the political environment and undermines the economic and social environment, anti-corruption can help improve such environments, according to Xiao.

A latest survey by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that 97.4 percent of people are fully confident in the work of exercising strict governance over the Party for curbing the spread of corruption, a 22.4-percent rise than that of 2012.

In addition, the CPC is a political party with a relatively comprehensive system of intra-Party regulations, with nearly 4,000 intra-Party regulations in effect.

“It is based on such clear understanding of the unique difficulties facing the Party, that Xi Jinping pointed out in the report that full and rigorous Party self-governance is an unceasing endeavor and that self-reform is a journey to which with no end,” said Tian.

Talents promotion and demotion with clear guidance

In terms of talent acquisition, the Party issued a revised regulation on proper promotion and demotion of officials last month, showing the Party’s determination to promote qualified and dedicated talent in the journey to realize the second centenary goal of building China into a modern socialist country. The original version was released in 2015.

Meanwhile, a full and rigorous Party self-governance manages officials with strict standards, measures, and disciplines.

To take a holistic approach, the Party has kept improving the personal matter report system for leading officials, which requests cross-checks of their integrity and Party discipline with random inspections at a rate of 10 percent each year, an increase from the previous 2-to-5 percent, according to Xu Qifang, deputy head of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee.

All candidates to leading positions are required to go through cross-checking and all centrally administered officials were checked before the 20th National Congress of the CPC, Xu added.

Take Xie Chuntao, a delegate to the 20th National Congress of the CPC, as an example. He said that qualification for the delegates is a “hard-earned” honor.

“It’s rare for political parties in the world to make such great efforts to elect outstanding members of the Party as the CPC does,” he said.

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