AVIATION
Lufthansa cancels flights
German airline Lufthansa said yesterday it had cancelled most of its domestic, European and long-haul flights at six German airports due to strike action by ground personnel and some cabin crew. Out of nearly 1,800 planned flights yesterday, “we will operate 20 short and medium-range flights and 12 long-distance services,” a spokesman said. Services union Verdi called the strike after three rounds of pay talks with management ended without any agreement.
ELECTRONICS
Philips earnings fall
Royal Philips NV, the maker of lights, home appliances and health care equipment, says first quarter earnings fell on the back of soft sales and unfavorable annual comparisons. Even so, the company said yesterday that its underlying margins had improved due to cutting costs. In the first quarter, Philips made a net profit of 162 million euros (US$212 million), down from 183 million euros a year earlier when it enjoyed 119 million euros worth of one-time gains, notably from the sale of its Senseo coffee maker brand. Sales fell 1 percent to 5.26 billion euros.
ELECTRONICS
Small profit for LG Display
LG Display Co reported a small profit in the first three months of the year, reflecting slackening orders from its key client, Apple Inc, during a typically slow period for the consumer electronics market. LG Display said yesterday its net income for the January-March period was 3.5 billion won (US$3.1 million), compared with a net loss of 129.2 billion won a year earlier. Its first quarter sales rose 10 percent to 6.8 trillion won. Operating profit stood at 151.3 billion won, compared with a 211.1 billion won loss a year earlier.
SHIPBUILDING
Firms in merger talks: report
Shares in Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding surged yesterday following a report that the shipbuilding giants are starting merger talks. Mitsui Engineering surged 13.01 percent to ¥191 (US$1.92), while Kawasaki Heavy was down 0.90 percent at ¥330. Earlier, the Tokyo Stock Exchange temporarily suspended trading in the firms’ shares “to confirm whether the report is true or not,” it said in a statement. However, both firms dismissed the report in the leading Nikkei business daily.
ENGINEERING
ABB to acquire Power One
Swiss-Swedish engineering giant ABB said yesterday that it would acquire the California company Power One, which specializes in renewable energy such as solar, for US$1 billion. The transaction, which has been approved by the US company’s board, should wrap up during the second quarter, ABB said in a statement. The engineering giant said it would pay US$6.35 per share in cash, or a total of $1.028 billion, but stressed that the deal would also allow it to absorb Power One’s US$266 million cash holdings.
BANKING
Lloyds aims to issue shares
Lloyds Banking Group PLC, the UK’s biggest mortgage lender, plans to issue new shares to raise £350 million (US$532.9 million). The bank will use the proceeds to fund discretionary payments on Tier 1 hybrid capital securities to be made during this year, it said in a statement yesterday. The plans were first disclosed in its last year’s results, London-based Lloyds said. Lloyds will issue almost 713 million shares at about 49.09 pence apiece. The company’s stock closed at 47.49 pence in London trading on Friday.
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