CHINA
IPO valuations fall
The average price of initial public offerings fell to about 20 times earnings early this month after the government acted to curb insider trading and speculation, the nation’s top regulator said. IPO valuations are now more in line with the secondary market after falling from a ratio of more than 30 in the first quarter and 47 last year, China Securities Regulatory Commission Chairman Guo Shuqing (郭樹清) said, according to statement on Friday on the watchdog’s Web site. The regulator is studying the possibility of excluding non-recurring items from net income to make its delisting policy more effective, according to the statement.
PETROLEUM
Russia seeks cooperation
Russian Vice Premier Igor Sechin is dropping hints he would welcome greater international cooperation to explore for oil in his country. He was referring to a new partnership between Russian oil and gas company Rosneft and its US rival ExxonMobil. The agreement with ExxonMobil is “quite special, but there will be others” Sechin told the Wall Street Journal during a visit to the US last week. In the interview published on Saturday, Sechin described the Exxon-Rosneft agreement as “a long-term collaboration, which would be extended for decades — 30, 40 or 50 years.”
JAPAN
Plant blast kills worker
A blast at a chemical plant in the west killed one worker and injured at least 15 others yesterday, police said. The accident occurred at a factory operated by comprehensive chemical manufacturer Mitsui Chemicals in Yamaguchi Prefecture, about 700km southwest of Tokyo, an official at the Yamaguchi prefectural police said. The deceased was a 22-year-old male employee, police said, with Jiji Press identifying him as Shota Sunakawa. Nine other company employees and workers for subcontract companies were severely or slightly injured, while at least four residents in the neighborhood were slightly injured, police said. The plant had been manufacturing materials to make adhesives, he said.
FINANCE
BofA settlement challenged
A recently proposed US$20 million settlement of shareholder claims by Bank of America Corp (BofA) over its 2009 acquisition of Merrill Lynch is being challenged by a separate group of shareholders as too small. A federal judge in New York has ordered the Bank of America directors who were sued over the deal to defend the settlement in court on May 4, along with the lead shareholders they settled with. The US$20 billion takeover deal was forged on the same September 2008 weekend that Lehman Brothers collapsed. The deal came into question later after Bank of America disclosed that Merrill would post US$27.6 billion in losses that year.
TIRES
Michelin recalling bus tires
Michelin is recalling more than 77,000 bus tires because sidewall defects can cause them to lose air rapidly, increasing the risk of a crash. The Michelin XZU2, XZU3 and XM505 tires involved in the recall were produced from 2005 to fall 2011 at Michelin’s plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Michelin North America Inc says its lease fleet customers complained that some of the tires had lost air rapidly during use as retreads over the past two years, prompting a company investigation. It did not cite any instances of crashes.
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