UNITED STATES
Congress passes three FTAs
The US Congress has approved free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, ending a four-year drought in the forming of new trade partnerships and giving the White House and Capitol Hill the opportunity to show they can work together to stimulate the economy and return people to work. In rapid succession, the House and Senate voted on the three trade pacts, which the administration says could boost exports by US$13 billion and support tens of thousands of US jobs. The agreements would lower or eliminate tariffs that US firms face in the three countries.
RETAIL
Big losses ahead: Carrefour
French retail company Carrefour SA is warning that its losses will be greater than expected for the year because of tough economic conditions. The Paris-based superstore operator yesterday reported flat sales for the third quarter, dragged down by weak or shrinking sales in France and the rest of Europe. Carrefour is continuing to grow in emerging markets, particularly in Latin America and China, but those gains only barely offset a poor showing in Europe, where fears of a recession and a ballooning sovereign debt crisis have hit consumer spending. Carrefour posted sales of 22.8 billion euros (US$31.39 billion), up 0.3 percent, and said its full-year earnings could drop by 15 to 20 percent.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Roche sales decline 14%
Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG announced a 14 percent drop in year-on-year sales in the first nine months of this year, blaming Switzerland’s strong currency for weakening its results. The manufacturer of cancer-fighting drugs said sales for the three quarters — including those of Tamiflu — fell to 24.4 billion Swiss francs (US$27 billion) compared with nearly SF28.4 billion the same time last year. However, sales in US dollar terms were up 4 percent. The company saw sales of its best-selling drug Avastin drop after a US Food and Drug Administration panel ruled breast cancer patients should no longer use it.
INTERNET
AOL mulls Yahoo merger
AOL Inc chief executive Tim Armstrong has been meeting with top shareholders in the past couple of weeks to push the idea of a sale to Yahoo Inc that could wring up to US$1.5 billion of cost savings, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions. “The focus in the meeting has gone from a year ago of being around the fundamentals to now being how could you carve this up, what are separate assets worth, are there ways to sell off the business to extract value from them,” said a top 20 AOL shareholder who attended one of the meetings. Armstrong said a merger between AOL and Yahoo could wring out US$1 billion to US$1.5 billion in savings from overlapping data centers and duplicate news sites, such as sports, entertainment and finance, according to another major shareholder who met with Armstrong.
AUSTRALIA
Unemployment rate drops
Australia’s unemployment rate dropped to a lower-than-expected 5.2 percent last month, according to official figures, easing the likelihood of an interest rate cut and boosting the Australian dollar. The Bureau of Statistics said the seasonally adjusted jobless rate fell from 5.3 percent in August as the economy added 20,400 jobs last month. The number of full-time workers rose by 10,800, while part-timers increased by 9,600, the bureau said.
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