INDIA
Google, Yahoo units probed
The government is investigating whether the Indian units of US Internet giants Google Inc and Yahoo Inc might have violated the country’s foreign exchange laws, the Wall Street Journal said in a report. Notices have been sent to the units that they are being investigated for potential violations, the paper said. It cited a senior official at a division of the federal finance ministry, which monitors foreign exchange transactions and money-laundering.
COSMETICS
L’Oreal profits rise 8.9%
French cosmetics giant L’Oreal on Monday reported a solid increase in sales and profit for last year, driven by growth in emerging markets, which the company said would surpass western Europe as its most important region this year. Separately, the cosmetics giant announced the end of an era, saying 89-year-old L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, France’s wealthiest woman, is being replaced on the board by her 25-year-old grandson, Jean-Victor Meyers. The company reported that its net profit amounted to 2.44 billion euros (US$3.23 billion) last year, up 8.9 percent from a year earlier. Sales rose 4.3 percent to 20.34 billion euros, it said.
HOSPITALITY
InterContinental profits rise
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, the world’s largest hotel group by rooms, said profit rose 57 percent last year as business travel recovered, led by the US and Greater China. Net income climbed to US$460 million from US$293 million in 2010, the Denham, England-based company said in a statement yesterday. “Looking ahead, in spite of considerable uncertainty in the eurozone, IHG is well positioned globally to benefit from positive long term industry trends and in particular, growing demand in emerging markets,” InterContinental chief executive officer Richard Solomons said in the statement.
INDIA
Inflation at two-year low
The country’s headline inflation slipped to a more than two-year low last month, official data showed yesterday, giving the central bank scope to cut interest rates to counter weakening economic growth. The wholesale price index fell to 6.55 percent last month from a year earlier, the lowest in 26 months, thanks mainly to falling prices of food and vegetables. The figure, which marked a decline from December’s inflation of 7.47 percent, reinforced hopes that inflation was on a downward trend. The Reserve Bank of India has raised interest rates 13 times since March 2010 in a bid to bring down inflation. Analysts expect the first interest rate cuts to come in April or March.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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