BANKING
Credit Suisse mulls job cuts
Swiss bank Credit Suisse could announce the loss of up to 5,000 jobs in its investment banking business at its forthcoming first-quarter results, a Swiss newspaper reported on Sunday. Citing an estimate from a member of senior management, the Sonntag newspaper said the bank could cut about 5,000 positions. The investment bank is “simply completely oversized,” the person was quoted as saying. The bank is scheduled to report first-quarter results on April 25. Credit Suisse ended last year with 20,900 investment bankers, 200 more than at the beginning of the year. Staff count at the whole bank was largely stable even after two rounds of cuts eliminated 7 percent of its overall workforce, or 3,500 jobs.
INVESTMENT
Carlyle eyes US$760m IPO
Carlyle Group LP, is seeking to raise as much as US$762.5 million in its initial public offering (IPO), according to a person with knowledge of the matter. About 30.5 million shares will be offered at between US$23 and US$25 each, said the person, who declined to be identified because the Washington-based private-equity firm, has yet to release terms of the IPO. The company planned to file an updated prospectus as soon as yesterday, the person said. The firm has already said the stock will list on the NASDAQ under the symbol CG. Carlyle, which has considered an IPO since 2007, would be valued at between US$7 billion and US$7.6 billion after the sale, the person said. The firm follows competitors Blackstone Group LP, Apollo Global Management LLC and Fortress Investment Group LLC in selling shares to the public.
TRADE
FTA comes into force
The US-Colombia free-trade agreement (FTA) will enter into force next month, far earlier than expected, as a result of what the administration of US President Barack Obama called “historic” progress for Colombian worker protections and human rights. The announcement came during the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, where Obama met regional political and business leaders, including Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, to push for greater access for US exports. US Trade Representative Ron Kirk told reporters in the Caribbean resort of Cartagena that the trade deal Obama signed in October last year would be implemented on May 15, months ahead of what most trade watchers had anticipated. An elated Santos said free-trade with the US had been a Colombian dream for 20 years that had finally come true.
TECHNOLOGY
Twitter expands in Japan
Twitter Inc will “aggressively” add sales staff in Japan to attract more advertisers as local user growth exceeds the company’s global expansion, Twitter chief executive officer Dick Costolo said. The microblogging service will continue to invest and hire in Japan and will also add engineers, Costolo told reporters in Tokyo yesterday. The San -Francisco-based company, which lets users post 140-character messages, is expanding abroad to decrease its reliance on the US market. The percentage of revenue Twitter earns from the US will fall to 83 percent in 2014 from about 90 percent this year, researcher EMarketer estimated in January. Japan had the third-largest share of Twitter users with 29.9 million accounts created before Jan. 1, according to Semiocast, a social-media research company.
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