ECONOMY
S Korean job growth slows
South Korea’s unemployment rate was unchanged last month from August, but job growth showed signs of slowing down after recent big increases, official figures showed yesterday. The jobless rate was 3 percent last month, Statistics Korea said, compared with 3.4 percent in September last year. The economy added 264,000 jobs last month from a year earlier, compared with a figure of 490,000 in August. The increase in jobs was the smallest since September last year, when 249,000 were added.
INDUSTRY
Indian output disappoints
India’s industrial output grew by a weaker-than-expected 4.1 percent in August from a year earlier, hit by 18 months of interest rate hikes and a gloomy global trade outlook, data showed yesterday. The increase in output from India’s factories, mines and utilities fell short of 4.5 percent growth in the same month last year, and undershot financial market expectations of a 5 percent monthly expansion. However, the August figure was up from July’s 3.3 percent rise, the slowest in nearly two years, according to the Central Statistical Organisation.
MINING
Grasberg pumps up output
Freeport Indonesia has ramped up copper concentrate production at its strike-hit giant Grasberg Mine, taking it to more than 4,000 tonnes per day this month, while almost 79,000 tonnes would be shipped this week, the company said yesterday. Concentrate output was only 54 tonnes on Sept. 18, just days after the start of a strike by about half its workforce. The firm said output has steadily climbed since, peaking at 6,266 tonnes on Oct. 9, and was 4,494 tonnes on Monday.
LUXURY GOODS
Burberry sales rise
Burberry PLC said yesterday that like-for-like sales — excluding new stores and space — were up 16 percent in the second quarter ending Sept. 30, compared with a year ago. The company said important markets including New York, London and Paris were among its strongest performers, along with Hong Kong and Dubai. Burberry said like-for-like sales in China were up about 30 percent. Total revenue in the first and second quarters was up 30 percent to £830 million (US$1.3 billion), led by a 44 percent gain in retail sales. Burberry did not report earnings in the trading update.
OIL
Chevron warns on production
Chevron Corp said on Tuesday that it expects to report lower earnings for its oil exploration and production business in the third quarter, reflecting a sharp drop in oil-equivalent production for the period. The oil company expects that its third-quarter results will be in line with those of the second quarter. Chevron reported a profit of US$7.7 billion, or US$3.85 a share, for the second quarter — the largest quarterly profit since the third quarter of 2008.
INVESTMENT
Bain in talks to buy Skylark
US investment firm Bain Capital is in final talks to buy Japanese restaurant chain Skylark from Nomura Holdings for as much as ¥250 billion (US$3.3 billion), reports said yesterday. The deal would be one of the largest acquisitions in Japan by a foreign investment firm since the financial crisis in 2008. An agreement between Bain and Nomura will likely be finalized later this month, Dow Jones Newswires said, citing an unnamed source. Skylark has about 3,680 outlets in Japan and overseas.
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