FRANCE
Industrial sentiment worsens
The country’s industrial sentiment dropped by one point to 92 points this month, pushing further below its long-term average of 100, figures released yesterday by the national statistics office showed. Manufacturers evaluated the business climate as having worsened, adding that while order books were stable, they were judged as being somewhat thin, INSEE said. The outlook also remained negative. Last week, INSEE reported that industrial production rose by 1.5 percent in April, mostly due to increased gas and electricity output during unseasonably cold weather.
SOUTH KOREA
Household debt ‘alarming’
The country’s household loans have grown “at an alarming rate” to US$553 billion in April and are vulnerable to financial shocks arising from a global economic downturn, a report said yesterday. More people are borrowing just to meet living expenses and there is an increase in borrowers from the older age group and lower income group, the report from Moody’s Investors Service said. The credit ratings agency said outstanding household loans at the country’s banks and non-banks totaled 639.6 trillion won (US$553 billion) at the end of April, compared with 622.2 trillion won in July last year. The debt-to-disposable income ratio was 135 percent last year, higher than 114 percent in 2002, the year before the country’s credit card crisis.
FOOD
Danone cuts profit forecast
Danone, the world’s biggest yogurt maker, cut its profitability forecast as consumers in Spain switch to less expensive products and raw-material costs rise more than anticipated. The maker of Actimel yogurt expects its operating margin to decline by 50 basis points this year on a like-for-like basis, the Paris-based company said yesterday in a statement. “The group has faced a swift deterioration in consumption in southern Europe that has proven steeper than anticipated, especially in Spain,” the company said. “Danone has chosen to respond with a combination of support for its brands and steps to make its products more competitive.”
AVIATION
Luxon to head Air NZ
Air New Zealand yesterday said former head of Unilever Canada Christopher Luxon would take over as the flag carrier’s new chief executive at the end of the year. Luxon, a New Zealander who joined the airline last year as head of its international operations after almost two decades at the Anglo-Dutch food and cosmetics giant, will replace outgoing Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe. Air New Zealand, which announced a 61.2 percent slump in interim profits in February, is in the midst of a cost-cutting program that will slash more than 400 jobs and deliver savings of NZ$195 million (US$154.5 million) by 2015.
INTERNET
Yahoo hires Michael Barrett
Yahoo is turning to a former colleague of its interim CEO to oversee the troubled Internet company’s efforts to sell more online advertising. Monday’s announcement that Michael Barrett will be running Yahoo’s advertising sales team as chief revenue officer comes five weeks after the Sunnyvale, California, company dumped Scott Thompson as its CEO amid a flap over misleading information on his biography. Thompson’s replacement, interim CEO Ross Levinsohn, used to work closely with Barrett while they were both top Internet executives at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp when it owned MySpace.
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