FINANCE
Private sector mulls Greece
Changing the terms of voluntary private sector participation in the bailout for Greece agreed to in July could cost the support of private investors, Deutsche Bank chief executive officer Josef Ackermann said in an interview published on Saturday. “If we reopen the voluntary accord of July 21, we will not only lose precious time, but quite possibly also private investor support,” Ackermann told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. “The impact of such a move would be incalculable. This is why I am warning in the most forceful way against any material revision.” Ackermann is also head of the International Institute of Finance, which has been leading bond swap talks on behalf of banks. Holders of Greek bonds agreed to accept a 21 percent “haircut” on the value of their debt on July 21 as part of an EU-IMF bailout.
AUTOMOBILES
Renault-Nissan eyes Brazil
French-Japanese alliance -Renault-Nissan plans to double its share of the Brazilian auto market by 2016, group president Carlos Ghosn said on Saturday. In order to meet his goals, Ghosn will announce two major investments on Wednesday and Thursday for the two brands in Brazil, but he declined to provide those figures in advance. Brazilian Science and Technology Minister Aloizio Mercadante said the funding would help expand the Renault-Nissan plant in southern Parana State and create a new one in Rezende City, in Rio de Janeiro State. Announcements on manufacturing electric cars were also expected. “We have set a goal to double our market share by 2016, to exceed 13 percent. Renault aims to exceed 8 percent, and Nissan 5 percent,” Ghosn said after talks with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
BANKING
Citigroup looks to sell EMI
Citigroup Inc could sell EMI Music Publishing Ltd after seeking final offers by Wednesday, the Sunday Times reported, without saying where it got the information. The most likely buyer is Warner Music Group Corp, according to the newspaper. Citigroup must raise £3 billion (US$4.7 billion) to break even on EMI, the label of artists including Coldplay and Kate Perry, according to the report. Citigroup seized EMI from Guy Hands’s Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd in February after the firm was declared insolvent.
UNITED STATES
Job market to stay weak
Gains in payrolls last month were probably too small to reduce joblessness and manufacturing almost stalled as concern mounted that the global recovery was losing momentum, economists said before reports last week. Employment climbed by 50,000 workers after no change in August, according to the median forecast of 67 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before Labor Department data scheduled to be released on Friday. Factories grew at the slowest pace since July 2009, a survey of purchasing managers could show today. The European debt crisis, political haggling in the US and a plunge in stock prices have led to a drop in consumer and business confidence that could continue to hurt spending and hiring. The risk that the world’s largest economy could fall back into a recession has prompted the Federal Reserve and President Barack Obama to announce further measures to spur the expansion. Private payrolls, which exclude government jobs, rose 90,000 after a gain of 17,000 in the previous month, economists forecast the employment report would also show.
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],”
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
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