SOFTWARE
Microsoft board faces suit
Microsoft Corp’s board faces a lawsuit over the way it handled an error with its Internet Explorer browser that ended up costing the company a record-breaking US$731 million fine by EU antitrust regulators. The lawsuit, brought by shareholder Kim Barovic in US federal court in Seattle on Friday, charges that directors and executives, including founder Bill Gates and former chief executive officer Steve Ballmer, failed to manage the company properly and that the board’s investigation into how the miscue occurred was insufficient. The legal action is the first to emerge from a humiliating episode for Microsoft, which the software company has never fully explained and has accounted for only as a “technical error.” In March last year, the EU levied its largest-ever antitrust fine against Microsoft for breaking a legally binding commitment made in 2009 to ensure that consumers in Europe had a choice of how they access the Internet, rather than defaulting to Internet Explorer.
ENERGY
Exxon CEO gets US$28.1m
The chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp received compensation worth US$28.1 million last year, a 3 percent increase over the previous year, according to an analysis of a company regulatory filing. Most of Rex Tillerson’s compensation was in the form of stock awards, which the largest US oil company valued at US$21.3 million when they were granted. His overall compensation for last year was up from US$27.2 million in 2012. Tillerson, 62, received a salary of US$2.7 million, a 6 percent increase from a year ago, plus a cash bonus of nearly US$3.7 million, which was down 20 percent because Exxon’s earnings fell compared with 2012, the company said.
MINING
Alcoa’s rating hit again
Alcoa Inc, the largest US aluminum producer, was cut to junk by a second ratings company as a global oversupply of the metal hampers profitability. Fitch Ratings said in a statement on Friday that it cut Alcoa’s credit grade one level below investment grade to “BB+” from “BBB-.” It sees Alcoa’s total debt remaining more than two-and-a-half times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The company was cut to junk by Moody’s Investors Service in May last year. Standard & Poor’s rates its debt “BBB-,” the lowest investment-grade level.
FINANCE
Orix eyes PrimeCredit bid
Orix Corp, Japan’s most acquisitive financial firm, is considering bidding for Standard Chartered PLC’s consumer credit unit in Hong Kong, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Orix may seek to add another investor to buy PrimeCredit Ltd, said one of the people, asking not to be identified because the information is private. London-based Standard Chartered wants to sell the unit for about US$700 million, almost three times book value, and plans to compile a list of potential bidders this month, another person said. Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands said last month that he may sell the unit as the UK bank cuts costs and pares operations lacking sufficient scale. Buying PrimeCredit would help Orix, whose businesses include leasing, lending and real estate, expand abroad as a shrinking Japanese population limits the domestic growth potential of firms.
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