BANKING
Nikko to buy DBS Asset
Sumitomo Trust and Banking Co’s unit Nikko Asset Management Co agreed to buy DBS Asset Management (星展資金管理) from DBS Group Holdings Ltd (星展集團) for S$137 million (US$105 million) to tap business from the expanding ranks of wealthy Asians. Under the accord, DBS Asset will also take a 7.25 percent stake in Nikko Asset and the combined firm’s managed assets will total more than US$150 billion, the companies said in a joint statement filed with the Singapore stock exchange yesterday. The number of millionaires in the Asia--Pacific region reached 3 million last year, matching those in Europe for the first time, a June report by Capgemini and Bank of America Corp’s Merrill Lynch unit said. Asian millionaires’ assets rose 31 percent to US$9.7 trillion, the study showed.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Pfizer CEO steps down
Pfizer Inc’s chief executive has stepped down without warning, acknowledging the personal toll involved in steering the world’s largest drugmaker through a multibillion-dollar merger. The departure of Jeffrey Kindler, 55, comes more than a year after Pfizer completed the signature move of his tenure — the US$67 billion acquisition of rival Wyeth. However, he leaves before the company confronts the US patent expiration of its top-selling Lipitor cholesterol medicine.
ELECTRONICS
Rare-earth extractor coming
Hitachi Ltd has developed machinery to harvest rare earth metals from discarded hard-disk drives and compressors as electronics makers seek to reduce their reliance on Chinese supply. The machine can extract 100 rare earth magnets from hard disk drives per hour, about eight times faster than manual labor, Tokyo-based Hitachi said in a statement yesterday. The company plans to get 10 percent of its rare-earth needs through recycling when the business begins operating in fiscal 2013, Satoko Yasunaga said.
AIRLINES
Cathay Pacific CEO named
Airline Cathay Pacific has announced that chief operating officer John Slosar will take over as chief executive next year when current head Tony Tyler leaves to head the industry lobby group IATA. In a press release, the Hong Kong flag carrier said Slosar would take up the post after Tyler steps down on March 31 next year. Slosar, 54, was managing director of parent company Swire Pacific’s beverage division before joining Cathay in 2007.
AUTOMOBILES
Hyundai halts Ulsan plant
Hyundai Motor Co stopped production at its plant in Ulsan, South Korea, yesterday because of worker unrest, less than four hours after a three-week shutdown ended. Hyundai, based in Seoul, initially stopped manufacturing at the plant on Nov. 15 after the workers began a sit-in demanding they be made permanent employees. Hyundai resumed plant operations at 50 percent of capacity at 8am yesterday even as the sit-in continued.
SERVICES
Philippines top call-center
The Philippines has become the call-center capital of the world, overtaking India as the No. 1 player in the global business outsourcing market, according to industry data and the government. Philippine President Benigno Aquino forecast last week that the industry’s revenues would hit US$12 billion to US$13 billion next year, rising to US$100 billion by 2020 to account for a fifth of the global market.
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