RETAIL
Best Buy closing PRC outlets
US retailer Best Buy said yesterday it would close its nine outlets in China, as well as its head office in Shanghai, making it the latest foreign operator to struggle in the fast-growing market. The consumer electronics giant said it would merge its China operations into its wholly owned subsidiary, Five Star Appliance Co. “It was a difficult decision to close the stores, but we are confident in our business strategy,” Best Buy Asia president Kal Patel said in a statement. Five Star will open nearly 50 stores in fiscal 2012, Best Buy said.
INTERNET
Alibaba executives quit
Alibaba.com Ltd (阿里巴巴) shares fell the most in more than a year after the company said an internal probe found more than 2,300 vendors used its Web site to defraud global buyers, prompting the chief executive officer to quit. A number of Alibaba employees were responsible for allowing sellers to create bogus storefronts, China’s biggest electronic-commerce company said on Monday. Chief executive David Wei (衛哲) and chief operating officer Elvis Lee (李旭輝), who were not accused of wrongdoing, resigned to take responsibility for the “systemic breakdown” of integrity, it said.
ENERGY
BP, Reliance sign deal
Britain’s BP said on Monday it would pay US$7.2 billion for a stake in Indian energy giant Reliance Industries’ oil assets. The deal could be worth up to US$20 billion, with later investment in key Indian oil and gas assets. BP will initially pay Reliance US$7.2 billion for a 30 percent stake in 23 Indian oil and gas blocks, most of which are along the country’s east coast. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani and BP chief executive Robert Dudley signed the deal — India’s single-largest foreign direct investment — in London.
BANKING
CS banker arrested in US
A Credit Suisse (CS) banker has been arrested in the US in connection with a federal investigation into the Swiss bank’s work with offshore accounts, the New York Times reported on Monday. The banker, Christos Bagios, was arrested in New York and transferred to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was charged with conspiracy and fraud, the report said, citing unnamed sources. It was unclear whether Bagios, a Greek citizen, was cooperating with the investigation, the report said.
GERMANY
Consumer sentiment rises
Consumer sentiment is tipped to rise slightly next month owing to wage increase expectations, according to a GfK survey released yesterday. GfK expects its household confidence index to reach 6 points next month, from a revised 5.8 points this month, a statement said. The Nuremberg-based research group said consumers felt salaries would increase as unemployment falls in the largest European economy.
AUTOMOBILES
BMW unveils new brand
German luxury carmaker BMW on Monday introduced its long-awaited new brand, BMW i, with two new models that will be equipped with electric and hybrid drive systems from 2013. The group said it had also created a venture capital company based in New York to “significantly expand its range of mobility services over the years ahead,” with an initial investment that is to total US$100 million. The initial rollout is planned for 40 US cities and 40 others worldwide.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts