SOUTH KOREA
Consumer confidence falls
Consumer confidence fell to a three-month low as the European debt crisis and the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dimmed the nation’s economic outlook. The sentiment index fell to 99 this month from 103 last month, the Bank of Korea said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. A reading below 100 indicates pessimists outnumber optimists. The consumer confidence index is based on survey responses from 2,042 households in 56 cities. It was conducted by mail and telephone between Dec. 14 and Wednesday last week.
INDUSTRY
Chinese firms’ profits cool
Chinese industrial companies’ profits growth cooled, adding to evidence the government may need to ease policy to protect the nation’s economic expansion. Net income increased 24.4 percent in the first 11 months of this year from a year earlier to 4.66 trillion yuan (US$737 billion), the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics said on its Web site yesterday. The pace compared with 25.3 percent gain in the first 10 months and a 27 percent rise in the first three quarters. For last month alone, industrial companies’ profit grew 17.9 percent, compared with a 12.5 percent pace in October, according to the data.
MEDIA
Berkshire deal completed
Berkshire Hathaway Inc has completed the purchase of company chairman Warren Buffett’s hometown newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald. The deal, announced on Nov. 30, for US$150 million and the assumption of US$50 million in debt, ended one of the newspaper industry’s last sizable employee-ownership plans. World-Herald spokesman Joel Long said on Monday the deal closed on Friday. World-Herald shareholders — about 275 employees and retirees and the Peter Kiewit Foundation — approved the sale by an overwhelming vote, Long said. The amount employees received for each of their shares, which are not publicly traded, wasn’t disclosed.
FAST FOOD
Wendy’s re-enters Japan
Wendy’s Co, a US fast-food chain, re-entered the Japanese market after pulling out of the country in 2009, with plans to open 100 restaurants in the next five years. The Dublin, Ohio-based company estimates a potential of about 700 restaurants in the Asian nation over the long term, according to a company statement. It opened its first joint venture restaurant in Tokyo’s Omotesando area yesterday with Higa Industries Co. Wendy’s ended its 29-year history in Japan at the end of 2009 after restaurant operator Zensho Co decided to end its franchise contract. The chain had 71 stores in Japan as of October that year.
PETROLEUM
Cairn eyes more drilling
Cairn India, a unit of British exploration firm Cairn Energy PLC, said on Monday that it hopes to start the second phase of drilling oil and natural gas deposits off Sri Lanka. During the first phase that began in August, Cairn drilled three wells, but found no oil in the third well, the company said, adding that it would continue to study the other two wells off Sri Lanka’s northwestern coast of Mannar. A net oil importer, Sri Lanka has also offered underwater blocks to India and China. The Russians carried out the first drilling in the region in 1971 without any commercial success and the government subsequently abandoned the search until Norwegians helped with new seismic studies in the past decade.
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