SINGAPORE
Economy to slow next year
The economy is likely to grow 15 percent this year, but expansion will moderate to 4 to 6 percent next year, the government said yesterday following the release of third-quarter data. The government earlier predicted 13-15 percent GDP growth this year. The Ministry of Trade and Industry said the biomedical and financial sectors would drive growth in the fourth quarter with manufacturing expansion slowing down. GDP growth in the third quarter from a year ago moderated to 10.6 percent, compared to record 19.5 percent growth in the second quarter. Manufacturing growth fell to 14.3 percent in the third quarter from 46.1 percent in the previous three months.
RETAIL
Carrefour cancels sell-off
French retail giant Carrefour said yesterday it had canceled a planned sale of its stores in Malaysia and Singapore, deciding instead to build up its market share in the Asian nations. Carrefour, the world’s second-biggest retailer behind US colossus Walmart, said this week it was offloading its 42 Thai stores, and had been looking to sell its 23 Malaysian and two Singaporean outlets as well. The firm said it had decided to retain its presence in Malaysia and Singapore, after the planned auction did not attract bids that would have justified proceeding.
BANKING
ICBC mulls Kwangju takeover
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is considering taking over South Korea’s Kwangju Bank, a report said yesterday, as the world’s largest bank by market value moves to expand overseas. The newspaper Dong-A Ilbo cited financial industry sources as saying ICBC had expressed an intention to bid for the regional bank based in the southwestern city of Kwangju. Kwangju Bank has assets of 17.9 trillion won (US$15.7 billion) and is a subsidiary of Woori Financial Holdings, South Korea’s largest financial holding company by assets.
AUTOMOBILES
GM returns to public trading
General Motors Co (GM), which went bankrupt last year after almost a century on the New York Stock Exchange, returns to public trading yesterday following an initial public offering (IPO) that raised more than US$20 billion. GM’s owners, including the US Treasury, sold US$15.8 billion of common shares at US$33 each on Wednesday in the second-largest US IPO on record, according to a statement. The company’s offering of US$4.35 billion of preferred shares and an overallotment option may boost the total to US$23.1 billion, more than the US$22.1 billion raised by Beijing-based Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (中國農業銀行) in the biggest IPO of common stock in history.
AIRLINES
Air France returns to profit
Air France-KLM said on Wednesday it returned to profit in its second quarter, taking advantage of an improved situation in the civil aviation sector as a whole to raise its financial targets. The carrier reported net earnings of 290 million euros (US$392 million) in the June-September period after a loss of 147 million euros a year earlier. At the operating level, reflecting core activities, the company earned 576 million euros against a loss of 47 million in the same period of last year. Sales rose 18.6 percent to 6.64 billion euros. Air France-KLM is now looking ahead to an operating profit of more than 300 million euros in its financial year to March next year. For the full fiscal year 2009 Air France-KLM suffered an operating loss of 1.28 billion euros.
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],”
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
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