The former president of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp said yesterday that he would set up a new media group aimed at helping startup companies across Asia.
Peter Chernin said the Hong Kong-based venture, called CA Media, would launch media, entertainment and technology businesses to make the most of the “tremendous opportunity” the region represents.
Chernin stepped down in June last year as president of News Corp, which owns Star TV and Dow Jones & Co, publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
“We see tremendous opportunity across Asia, but particularly in India, China, and Indonesia,” he said in a statement through his US-based Chernin Group.
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“These markets provide the ideal blend of economic, demographic, and industrial dynamism required to build a pan-Asian media organisation of significant scale. In Asia, there is less distinction between ‘traditional media’ and ‘new media,’” he said.
The Hong Kong-based company will build a variety of media businesses, including television channels, sports, digital media and film production, the statement said.
“Many of these areas in Asia are so underdeveloped in terms of media, in some cases 10 years behind the US, and in others 20 years, and that presents a real opportunity,” Chernin told the Journal in comments published yesterday.
CA Media will likely open offices in China, India and Indonesia, the statement said, adding that US private equity firm Bain Capital’s Brookside affiliate is among the investors in Chernin’s venture.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained