DEFENSE
US probes Honeywell part
Defense contractor Honeywell International Inc said on Sunday it is cooperating with a US Department of Justice probe into the overseas prod uction of equipment it provided for a US fighter jet. The US government inquiry involves electronics that Honeywell manufactured for the government’s new F-35 fighter planes, which are designed to be the military’s most advanced combat jets. Honeywell spokesman Scott Sayres said the Morristown, New Jersey-based company produced the component for the F-35 in China “for a short period of time,” but then voluntarily moved production to the US in 2012 after consulting with the US Department of Defense.
OIL
Sinopec to pay for Qingdao
Chinese state-owned oil giant Sinopec (中國石化) will pay compensation over a pipeline explosion in November last year at its facility in the city of Qingdao that killed dozens of people and caused losses of more than US$100 million, it said. Sinopec is listed in Hong Kong and in a filing to the stock exchange there, said that an official Chinese government investigation determined that “direct economic loss” from the accident totalled 751.72 million yuan (US$124.3 million). The company said it “will pay its share of the compensation,” although it did not say how much that would be, or what proportion of it would go directly to victims of the disaster, which killed 62 people and injured 136.
AUTOMAKERS
GM to reintroduce dividend
General Motors Co’s (GM) chief financial officer said on Sunday that the US automaker is close to reintroducing a common stock dividend, but he declined to provide any details on timing. “It’s clear to us that investors are anticipating a dividend,” Dan Ammann, who is set to become GM president on Thursday, said on the sidelines of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. “We’re closer than we have been given all the actions that we have taken, investment grade rating, all of that. When we have something to announce we’ll do it.” GM last paid a dividend on its common stock in May 2008.
AUTOMAKERS
BMW sells record cars
German carmaker BMW said yesterday it sold more cars than ever before last year and it aims to top that number again this year. BMW said in a statement it sold 1.964 million vehicles last year, “an increase of 6.4 percent from the previous record year of 2012.” The group owns three brands, BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce and also manufactures motorbikes. Global sales of the BMW brand alone rose by 7.5 percent to 1.655 million units. The group also sold a total 305,030 Minis worldwide and Rolls-Royce sales were up 1.5 percent at 3,630.
RETAIL
Metro sales hit
German retail and distribution giant Metro said yesterday that sales were down in the three months to December, hit by the strong euro and weak Christmas sales. Metro, which runs its business year from October to September, said that first-quarter sales declined by 3.3 percent to 18.7 billion euros (US$25.6 billion). The decline was “mainly due to negative currency effects in many parts of Eastern Europe and Asia,” as well as the lost revenues from the recently divested Real supermarkets in Russia, Romania and Ukraine and the Media Markt chain in China, the statement said.
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],”
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
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