BANKING
BofA settles debt dispute
Bank of America (BofA) will pay US$9.5 billion to settle US charges that it sold bad mortgage-backed securities to mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae ahead of the housing bust. The settlement, arranged with the US Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie, involves securities sold by BofA as well as by Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, which were acquired by the bank. BofA said it would make a cash payment to the agencies of US$6.3 billion and buy back US$3.2 billion in mortgage securities from them. Freddie said it would recoup US$5.1 billion in the deal, while Fannie said it would get US$4.4 billion.
TOBACCO
WTO to review Aussie law
A battle against Australia’s plain tobacco packaging rules gained pace at the WTO on Wednesday, as Indonesia won the right to seek a ruling by the global body. Indonesia is the fifth country to take Australia to the WTO, after cases brought last year by Ukraine, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Trade sources said that the WTO’s disputes settlement body had agreed to set up an independent panel of trade and legal experts to assess whether Australia is breaching the rules of global commerce. Under the ruled Canberra passed in 2011 and in force since December 2012, all tobacco products have to be sold in drab green boxes, use the same typeface and contain graphic images of diseased smokers.
INTERNET
Facebook suit dismissed
A California federal judge has dismissed a proposed class action lawsuit against Facebook Inc that had accused the company of misappropriating the names and likenesses of minors who use the social network. At issue was Facebook’s use of minors’ names and photos in targeted advertising in a case that highlighted privacy concerns. The lawsuit, originally filed in Illinois in 2011, had sought to represent all minors that used Facebook and had their names used in an ad. In a ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge Richard Seeborg ruled that the minors gave their consent when they signed up for Facebook under a “statement of rights and responsibilities” that governs the site.
CURRENCY
UBS suspends forex traders
UBS AG suspended foreign-exchange traders in the US, Singapore and Switzerland as its investigation into the alleged rigging of currency markets widened, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. They include Onur Sert, an emerging-markets spot trader based in New York, and at least three more worldwide, said the person, who asked not to be identified because of the probe. Sert and Dominik von Arx, a spokesman for UBS in London, both declined to comment on the suspensions. The bank opened a review of its currency operations last year after learned that traders in the industry had colluded to rig the benchmark WM/Reuters rates.
CONGLOMERATES
Citic to raise HK unit assets
Chinese conglomerate Citic Group (中國中信集團), whose businesses span property, resources and banking, plans to inject its vast assets into its Hong Kong-listed unit in a multibillion-dollar deal that will help it tap overseas investment. The country’s largest state-run conglomerate will hand all its shares in Citic Ltd — its operating company with unaudited assets of about US$36.2 billion at the end of last year — to Hong Kong unit Citic Pacific Ltd (中信泰富).
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