AUTOMOBILES
Ford CEO to stay insider
The next chief executive of Ford Motor Co will probably be a company insider, executive chairman Bill Ford Jr said on Friday. Ford said he is happy with chief executive Alan Mulally, who has given no hint of when he will retire. Speaking with reporters during a business conference, Ford laughed off a question about Mulally’s departure date. Company insiders say the leading contenders for the job are president of the Americas Mark Fields, president of the Asia Pacific and Africa regions Joe Hinrichs, product development chief Derrick Kuzak, global marketing chief Jim Farley and the chairman and chief executive of Ford Europe Stephen Odell.
AUTOMOBILES
No Chrysler IPO this year
Chrysler Group LLC, the US automaker controlled by Fiat SpA, needs more time to show strong financial results before holding an initial public offering (IPO), chief executive officer of both automakers Sergio Marchionne said on Friday. “We need an additional track record of performance and probably a better equity market than I’m seeing today.” Chrysler needs all of this year before an IPO he said. Marchionne is pushing Chrysler to raise its global sales by 32 percent to 2 million vehicles and turn an annual profit of US$200 million into US$500 million this year. Chrysler last month posted Q1 net profits of US$116 million, its first since emerging from bankruptcy in 2009.
FINANCE
Iceland funding approved
The IMF said on Friday it had approved a sixth tranche of US$225 million in financing for Iceland, citing Reykjavik’s “impressive progress” in post-crisis restructuring. The fund said Iceland’s economy would likely return to growth this year, but still faced risks from inflationary pressures, delays in investment projects, joblessness and slow private sector debt restructuring. It also approved the country’s strategy of easing capital controls. The IMF also warned about the need to continue strengthening financial institutions, saying the government needed to “resist absorbing private sector losses” to maintain a sustainable level of public debt.
CANADA
Ottawa to expand free trade
The government will seek to vastly expand its free-trade deals and improve the flow of people and goods to the US, while maintaining tough border security, the country’s governor-general said on Friday. In a throne speech ahead of the 41st session of parliament, Governor-General David Johnston said Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government aims to complete negotiations on trade agreements with the EU by next year and with India by 2013. Ottawa has signed free trade agreements with eight countries since 2006, and negotiations on another 50 are under way.
INTERNET
More hacking uncovered
Internet security firm Trend Micro warned on Friday that cyber attackers have attempted to infiltrate Web-based e-mail services run by Microsoft and Yahoo as well as Google. As US federal agents investigate a Gmail spying campaign uncovered by Google, Trend Micro said that Hotmail and Yahoo Mail had been similarly targeted. Google said on Wednesday that a cyber spying campaign originating in China had targeted the Gmail accounts of senior US officials, military personnel, journalists, Chinese political activists, and officials in several Asian countries. According to The Wall Street Journal, the US officials targeted included White House staff.
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