Shareholders in two joint ventures between China's Wahaha (娃哈哈) and Danone (達能) are suing the French food company for 10 million yuan (US$1.3 million) for violating their rights, a lawyer said yesterday.
The lawsuit filed in Weifang is the latest action in an extensive and bitter ownership feud over the Wahaha brand name between companies that were once commercial partners in a model of Sino-overseas cooperation.
"Danone has been buying the shares of other companies that compete with Wahaha, this is in violation of its shareholder agreements with Wahaha," Qian Weiqing (
Qian said Danone had bought between 20 percent and 90 percent of seven Chinese name brand food and beverage companies that were directly in competition with Wahaha.
Danone officials were also serving on the boards of both the Danone-Wahaha joint ventures as well as the boards of the other companies that were competing with Wahaha -- a conflict of interest, he said.
Last week, an arbitration commission in Hangzhou, where Wahaha is headquartered, voided the trademark transfer agreement between the two companies that dated back to 1996, in a major loss to Danone.
Danone immediately said it would appeal the Hangzhou court decision, citing errors in fact and protectionism.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day