JAPAN
Prices continue to decline
The nation’s consumer prices continued to slide last month, marking the 22nd straight monthly decline as the economy remained mired in deflation, government data showed yesterday. Core consumer price index, excluding volatile food items, fell 0.4 percent last year year-on-year, slightly better than market expectations of a 0.5 percent fall, according to a Dow Jones Newswires poll of analysts. Prices fell by 0.5 percent in November. For last year, Japan’s core consumer prices fell 1.0 percent from 2009, the government said. Unemployment rate fell below 5.0 percent for the first time in 10 months last month to 4.9 percent, improving 0.2 points from the previous month. For the year, the jobless rate was flat at an average of 5.1 percent.
UNITED KINGDOM
Consumer confidence plunges
UK consumer confidence plunged the most in almost two decades this month as an increase in sales tax hurt shoppers’ appetite for spending, a report by GfK NOP Ltd showed. The index of sentiment fell 8 points from last month to minus 29, the lowest since March 2009, the research group said in a statement in London yesterday. The decline was the biggest since 1992, it said. All five measures of the index fell, with a gauge on the climate for making major purchases dropping 22 points to minus 29. “Today’s figures, when combined with the bleak economic forecast, will make talk of a double-dip recession unavoidable,” GfK Social Research managing director Nick Moon said in the statement.
ENERGY
Rosnet, Exxon strike deal
Russia oil giants Rosneft and Exxon Mobil struck a billion-dollar deal to hunt for oil and gas under the Black Sea. Rosneft president Eduard Yurevitch Khudaynatov said he hoped to find 1 billion tonnes of oil and gas — mainly oil — in the 11,200km2 Tuapse Trough, in waters off the Krasnodar region. The Exxon Mobil contract was the second major victory for Russian oil at this year’s Davos, after Rosneft marked the first day of the meeting by expanding its Arctic deal with BP.
ELECTRONICS
Fujitsu’s profit quadruples
Fujitsu’s quarterly profit quadrupled from the meager earnings eked out a year earlier when the Japanese electronics maker racked up heavy losses from job cuts in Europe. Fujitsu Inc, which provides technology services for mobile devices and servers, reported yesterday it made October-December profit of ¥16.5 billion (US$200 million), up from ¥4.1 billion the same quarter in 2009. Sales dipped 4 percent to ¥1.096 trillion as demand weakened in technology services and electronic components. Sales were also hurt by the rising yen, which reduces the overseas earnings of Japanese exporters, erasing ¥45 billion from sales.
BANKING
La Caixa to list retail banking
Spain’s biggest savings bank La Caixa, announced on Thursday a complex deal to list its 9.48 billion euro (US$13 billion) retail banking operations on the market, part of a major industry shake-up. The bank said the boards of the firms involved agreed to an outline deal transferring La Caixa’s retail banking business into its listed investment arm, Criteria, to be known as CaixaBank. The deal was approved by the boards of La Caixa, Criteria and wholly owned affiliate Microbank, to create a structure able to comply with stricter new Spanish and international rules on banks’ balance sheets, it said in a statement released to Spain’s stock market regulator.
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