AUTOMOBILES
Tesla selling more shares
Tesla Motors announced plans on Wednesday to offer another 5.3 million shares in the US electric carmaker to the public to help fuel development of another model. The California-based Tesla, which was founded in 2003 by Elon Musk, a cofounder of PayPal and SpaceX, said it was also granting up to 795,000 shares of common stock to its underwriter at US$26 a share. Tesla also said chief executive Musk plans to buy 1.5 million shares directly from Tesla in a private placement and Blackstar Investco, an affiliate of Germany’s Daimler, plans to purchase up to 644,475 shares. Tesla hopes to raise US$214 million from the various operations and plans to use the money to fund development of a Model X crossover vehicle.
FASHION
Burberry invests in upgrades
Burberry is stepping up spending on new stores and upgrading existing ones to cash in on a boom in spending on luxury goods, it said yesterday, as it met forecasts with a 39 percent leap in annual profit. The British maker of raincoats and handbags, best known for its camel, red and black check pattern, said it would invest £180 million to £200 million (US$292 million to US$325 million) in the year to next March on new shops and refurbishments in major cities such as London, Paris, Chicago, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Sao Paulo. That is up from £108 million in the year just ended.
SOUTH KOREA
Four oil refiners fined
The Fair Trade Commission yesterday said it would fine four major oil refiners a total of 434.8 billion won (US$442.7 million) for operating a cartel to protect their market positions. The watchdog said SK Innovation, GS Caltex, Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil colluded to restrict competition for new gas stations, thereby helping them retain their market share. It said SK, the country’s largest refiner, should pay 138 billion won in fines while GS Caltex, Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil would be fined 177.2 billion won, 74.4 billion and 45.2 billion respectively.
INTERNET
Bartz reassures investors
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on Wednesday assured stock market analysts that the company was trying to repair the damage caused by a recent change in a key investment in China. Investors have been focused on a surprising May 10 disclosure that threatens to diminish the value of Yahoo’s 43 percent stake in Internet company Alibaba Group (阿里巴巴). Although she didn’t offer a timetable for reaching an agreement, Bartz said was confident Yahoo would be “appropriately compensated” for the Alipay spinoff.
ECONOMY
Portugal receives money
The EU raised 4.75 billion euros (US$6.7 billion) for Portugal in a new bond issue on Wednesday, while the IMF gave its first tranche of emergency funding as part of a joint 78 billion euro bailout. The EU funds will be delivered on Wednesday, the European Commission said, one day after a first bond issue raised 1.75 billion euros for Lisbon and 3 billion euros for Ireland. The Portuguese finance ministry said it had received 6.1 billion euros from the IMF, the first tranche of the lender’s portion of the bailout. The loans will “provide a comfortable liquidity situation in those member states in line with the country programme objectives,” the commission said. Both the 10-year bond issued on Tuesday and the five-year bond issued on Wednesday. Both attracted strong demand from Europe and Asia.
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],”
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
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