SOUTH KOREA
Current account surplus up
South Korea’s current account surplus hit a nine-month high last month thanks to record exports despite global economic uncertainty, the central bank said yesterday. The surplus reached US$4.94 billion last month, more than double a revised US$2.03 billion the previous month, the Bank of Korea said. Last month’s current account surplus — the broadest measure of international trade — was the biggest since a US$5.11 billion surplus in October last year. With the cumulative surplus reaching US$13 billion for the first seven months of the year, the Bank of Korea bank revised up its full-year forecast to US$15.5 billion.
METALS
Rusal first-half profit drops
Russia’s Rusal aluminum giant yesterday reported a 20.5 percent drop in first-half net profit due to higher debt-servicing costs and smaller returns from its partial holding in Norilsk Nickel. Rusal chief executive Oleg Deripaska also predicted sector volatility for the medium term, but added that demand for aluminum “in both established and fast-growing emerging markets” would remain strong. The firm reported a net profit of US$1.09 billion, down from the US$1.37 billion reported in the first six months of last year. Rusal holds an estimated 25 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest nickel producer.
ENERGY
Sinopec first-half profit rises
Sinopec (中國石化), Asia’s largest refiner by capacity, said first-half profit rose 12 percent as higher oil, gas and chemicals revenues helped offset a loss in its refining business. The company, also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, said on Sunday that its net profit in the first six months of the year was 41.2 billion yuan (US$6.4 billion), or 0.475 yuan per share, based on international financial reporting standards. The company attributed the improvement to higher oil and chemicals prices and better integration of its upstream and downstream businesses.
ELECTRONICS
LG Display lowers capex
Flat-panel maker LG Display Co’s capital expenditure would drop to about 3 trillion won (US$2.8 billion) next year, with no plan to build additional factories, chief executive officer Kwon Young-soo said. Kwon’s comments, made to the Korea Times in an interview, were confirmed by Son Young-jun, a spokesman for the company in Seoul. The flat-panel maker plans to invest about 4 trillion won this year.
BANKING
Qatar to invest in merger
Qatar will inject 500 million euros (US$704 million) into the merger of Greece’s Eurobank and Alpha Bank, set to be announced yesterday, a banking official involved in the deal said on Sunday. “There will be a capital injection from Qatar via a 500 million euro convertible bond,” said the official, who declined to be named. “The details of the capital plan will be spelled out tomorrow for the entire capital plan.”
AIRLINES
Tiger Airways CEO quitting
Singapore-based budget airline Tiger Airways yesterday announced that its chief executive, Tony Davis, was quitting in November. Davis “is leaving the company on 1 November 2011 to take up a new position outside of the company,” Tiger said in a statement to the Singapore Exchange, where it is listed. Tiger Airways acting chief executive Chin Yau Seng (陳有成) will succeed Davis.
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