FINANCE
ING plans to repay aid
ING Groep NV, the biggest Dutch financial-services company, plans to repay 2 billion euros (US$2.8 billion) of state aid in May at a 50 percent premium. “ING will fund this repurchase from retained earnings,” the Amsterdam-based bank and insurer said yesterday. The company plans to buy back the core Tier 1 securities sold to the state at the next coupon reset date on May 13, it said. ING received 10 billion euros of state aid in 2008 and also transferred the risk on 21.6 billion euros of US mortgage assets. The firm paid back 5 billion euros in December 2009 and CEO Jan Hommen said on Feb. 16 he’s “quite hopeful that we can repay the Dutch state to a significant amount this year.” “The strong recovery of the banking business in 2010 has enabled us to accelerate the repurchase of the core Tier 1 securities from retained earnings, while maintaining a robust capital position post repayment,” Hommen said in the statement.
RETAILERS
LVMH to control Bulgari
LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, the world’s leading luxury retailer, said yesterday it will take control of Italian top-end jeweler Bulgari SpA in a deal worth nearly 2 billion euros. An accord reached with the controlling Bulgari family for the company, founded in 1884, will see LVMH issue 16.5 million shares to them for their 51 percent holding in a deal valued at 1.84 billion euros. LVMH would also offer other Bulgari shareholders 12.25 euros a share, with this part of the deal potentially worth another 1.79 billion euros if all the outstanding shares are acquired. In turn, Bulgari would become the second-largest family shareholder in the LVMH group, taking two seats on the board. LVMH group recently bought a large stake in smaller French rival Hermes International SA, but has insisted that speculation it wants to ultimately control that company is without foundation.
FINANCE
LSE eyes NASDAQ takeover
The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is eyeing a takeover of its US rival NASDAQ just weeks after announcing a merger with the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Sunday Times reported. Although the companies have not held talks about a three-way tie-up, LSE and its Canadian counterpart expect to make their move later this year following the closing of their own deal, the newspaper said. A NASDAQ spokesman declined to comment. For now, LSE has its hands full as it tries to close on its £3.1 billion (US$5 billion) proposed takeover of TMX Group Inc. Last week the two exchanges defended their transatlantic tie-up to skeptical lawmakers as they faced the first of a series of government and regulatory hurdles.
VIETNAM
Foreign money loans curbed
Commercial lenders will be ordered to limit their loans made in foreign currencies as policymakers seek to narrow the nation’s trade deficit and stabilize its exchange rate, a central bank official said. Priority for the loans will be given to export companies that have foreign-currency resources to repay banks and importers of essential goods that aren’t produced domestically, the official said on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media. Tuoi Tre newspaper reported earlier yesterday that the central bank planned to limit the number of companies allowed to borrow in currencies other than the dong. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s government is struggling to contain inflation pressures and a trade gap that reached US$12.4 billion last year, undermining the dong.
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