ELECTRONICS
Panasonic bosses’ pay cut
Panasonic president Kazuhiro Tsuga and chairman Fumio Ohtsubo will have their salaries halved as part of a move to take the blame for the firm’s financial woes, the company said yesterday. Tsuga and Ohtsubo have been returning 40 percent of their pay since November last year voluntarily, while other executives have also given back up to 20 percent of their wages, a spokeswoman said. As of July, the program will be made official, she said.
AUTOMAKERS
European car sales drop
European car sales are sliding to a 20-year low after German concerns over the ongoing debt crisis sent demand plunging last month in the region’s biggest economy and removed the main buffer protecting automakers. Registrations last month fell 10 percent to 1.35 million vehicles, the 18th consecutive monthly decline, with Germany’s auto market plummeting 17 percent, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said yesterday in a statement. First-quarter deliveries in the region dropped 9.7 percent to a record low 3.1 million cars.
UNITED KINGDOM
Unemployment rate rises
The unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent of the workforce in the three months to the end of February from 7.8 percent in the three months to the end of January, official data showed yesterday. The number of unemployed increased to 2.563 million from 2.516 million over the same period, the Office for National Statistics said. The number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance meanwhile fell last month by 7,000 to 1.53 million.
RETAIL
Tesco profits plunge 95%
British supermarket giant Tesco yesterday said its annual net profits slumped 95 percent, and confirmed its costly exit from the US market. Earnings after taxation tumbled to £124 million (US$190 million) in its 2012-2013 financial year, compared with £2.806 billion last time around, Tesco said in a results statement. Profits nosedived as Tesco took a £1.2 billion hit from its struggling US division Fresh & Easy, and also booked a £804 million writedown on the value of its property portfolio in Britain.
INSURANCE
ING to sell share in US unit
ING Groep NV says it will sell a 25 percent stake in its US arm for about US$1.4 billion to US$1.5 billion in an initial public offering (IPO), as part of measures demanded by the European Commission to compensate after ING received a bailout from the Dutch government in 2008. ING US has insurance, investment and retirement businesses. The IPO price range suggests ING US is worth US$6 billion, less than half the US$14.2 billion the company had valued it on its books. The company yesterday said it would use proceeds to pay down debt.
ENERGY
Lockheed turns to OTEC
US defense contractor Lockheed Martin on Tuesday announced plans to build a green energy power plant that will use variations in ocean water temperature to generate electricity, taking a big step toward making the 130-year-old concept commercially viable. Lockheed signed an agreement on Saturday in Beijing with the privately held Reignwood Group to build the 10-megawatt offshore plant that will provide energy for a new luxury resort on Hainan Island. It will use what is known as ocean thermal energy conversion technology (OTEC).
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