JAPAN
Toyota still on top
Toyota remains Japan’s No. 1 global brand, but its value has fallen by nearly a fifth because of the recent massive recalls that dented consumer trust in the quality of its cars, according to an international consultant. An Interbrand report released yesterday said that the value of the Toyota Motor Corp brand dropped 16 percent to US$25.66 billion compared with its last report released a year ago. Toyota’s Lexus luxury model nameplate, which placed seventh last year, dropped to eighth, losing 19 percent of its value, Interbrand said. Interbrand said Honda Motor Co placed second, followed by electronics makers Canon Inc and Sony Corp, and then video-game maker Nintendo Co.
ELECTRONICS
Infineon raises targets
German semiconductor company Infineon yesterday raised its sales and profit margin targets for this year after posting a more than three-fold increase in net profit for the first quarter of its fiscal year. The company said it now expected sales to gain around 15 percent, compared with a previous forecast of 10 percent. The group’s 2010-2011 profit margin is estimated at close to 20 percent, up from the previous range of 15 percent to 20 percent. In the first three months of the year that began on Oct. 1, Infineon rang up 922 million euros (US$1.3 billion) in sales, a leap of 34 percent from the same period a year earlier. The group’s profit margin came to 19.2 percent.
TECHNOLOGY
Oracle settles lawsuit
Oracle Corp has agreed to pay US$46 million to settle a lawsuit over alleged kickbacks to win government work. The US Department of Justice charged that Sun Microsystems Inc, which Oracle bought last year, and other technology companies paid kickbacks to Accenture PLC for Accenture to recommend that federal agencies buy Sun products. The justice department said last year that the lawsuit covered software contracts that ran from 1998 to 2006 and were worth hundreds of millions of US dollars.
BANKING
Deutsche Bank expects drop
Germany’s leading Deutsche Bank expects net profit of about 600 million euros (US$822.99 million) in the fourth quarter, a nearly 54 percent drop from a year ago due to recent acquisitions and restructuring costs. The year before, Deutsche Bank had achieved net profit of 1.3 billion euros and Dow Jones Newswires analysts had agreed on an estimate of about 800 million euros for this year. Pre-tax profit for the fourth quarter was expected to be around 700 million euros, compared with 756 million a year earlier, the bank said late on Monday. Deutsche Bank publishes its annual results on Thursday.
BANKING
BOA cuts down on bonuses
Bank of America Corp (BOA) senior executives will not get cash bonuses for last year and chief executive Brian Moynihan will not receive a base salary increase this year, according to a securities filing on Monday. This year, Moynihan will have a base pay half as large as some of his chief rivals, with much of his compensation tied up in long-term awards. The head of the largest US bank by assets was paid US$950,000 in last year’s base salary. BOA’s board did increase the base pay for other senior executives. The salaries for chief financial officer Charles Noski, investment banking chief Thomas Montag and consumer bank head Joe Price will rise to US$850,000 this year from US$800,000.
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