RETAIL
Sun Art raises US$1.06bn
China’s leading hypermarket operator, Sun Art Retail Group (高鑫零售), has raised US$1.06 billion in a Hong Kong share sale, Dow Jones Newswires said, quoting an unnamed source. The retail giant, backed by France’s Groupe Auchan SA, sold 1.14 billion shares at HK$7.20 each, at the top end of its price range, Dow Jones said. The firm, which will start trading in Hong Kong on Friday, has an option to increase the offering by 15 percent if the shares are oversubscribed, which would boost the deal to US$1.2 billion. The group is a joint venture between Taiwanese supermarket-to-cement conglomerate Ruentex Group (潤泰) and Groupe Auchan.
INTERNET
Ebay buying Zong
EBay Inc is buying mobile payments provider Zong for about US$240 million in cash so it can extend the reach of its PayPal online payments service. The online auctioneer said on Thursday that Zong would help strengthen PayPal’s position in the mobile payments and digital goods markets. Zong allows people to use their mobile phones to buy virtual goods inside social networks and online games. To use it, they enter their phone number, which Zong verifies and clears the payment. The charges appear on customers’ monthly cell phone bills. EBay said Zong works with more than 250 mobile network operators in 45 countries.
JAPAN
Economy beats forecasts
The nation’s current account surplus shrank by a smaller-than-expected 51.7 percent from a year earlier in May with the impact of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami weighing on exports, data showed yesterday. The surplus came to ¥590.7 billion (US$7.3 billion) in May, finance ministry data showed, beating economists’ median forecast of ¥300 billion. The country logged a trade deficit of ¥772.7 billion in May against a year-earlier surplus of ¥402.7 billion, with exports falling 9.8 percent to ¥4.5 trillion and imports soaring 14.7 percent to ¥5.3 trillion, largely as a result of higher energy costs.
GERMANY
Exports up 4.3% in May
Exports cranked back up in May, with a 4.3 percent gain from April partially offsetting a slump of 5.6 percent that month, figures released yesterday by the national statistics office showed. The provisional gain in May left the country, which is Europe’s largest economy and the world’s second-biggest exporting nation after China, with a seasonally-adjusted trade surplus of 12.8 billion euros (US$18.4 billion), the Destatis office said. Imports were 3.7 percent higher in May month-on-month, Destatis said. On a 12-month comparison, exports showed an increase of 19.9 percent, while imports were 15.6 percent higher.
UNITED STATES
S&P upgrades California
Standard and Poor’s (S&P) revised California’s credit outlook to “stable” on Thursday, one of the first significant pieces of good news for state and local governments as they work their way out of the Great Recession. The outlook on the state’s US$89 billion of outstanding debt was revised to stable from negative on what S&P said was the better balance between money coming in and cash spent on state operations. S&P’s action comes on the heels of a US$129.5 billion budget deal for the next fiscal year that closed a gap projected to stretch to US$26.6 billion through the end of the next fiscal year.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six