ENERGY
Reliance profits hit peak
Reliance Industries Ltd, operator of the world’s biggest oil refinery complex, reported its highest quarterly profit in more than two years as a decline in the value of the rupee boosted export earnings. Net income in the quarter to March 31 for the company controlled by India’s richest billionaire Mukesh Ambani matched analyst estimates as refinery margins recovered from the previous three months, and it starts projects that will add to revenue. Higher profit is making analysts the most bullish on the company’s stock in more than two years, while its shares have increased to the highest since May 2011. Profit increased to 56.3 billion rupees (US$933.79 million), or 17.4 rupees a share, in the quarter, from 55.9 billion rupees, or 17.3 rupees, a year earlier, the Mumbai-based company said in a stock exchange filing yesterday.
SOCIAL MEDIA
LinkedIn sees 300m users
The career-focused social network LinkedIn announced on Friday it has 300 million members, with more than half the total outside the US. “While this is an exciting moment, we still have a long way to go to realize our vision of creating economic opportunity for every one of the 3.3 billion people in the global workforce,” LinkedIn vice president Deep Nishar said in a blog posting. Nishar said that for future growth, the company believes it will be more important to get people using the network on mobile devices. “We know mobile is critical,” he said. “Later this year, we are going to hit our mobile moment, where mobile accounts for more than 50 percent of all global traffic.”
BANKING
Italian bank to boost equity
Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena gave the go-ahead on Friday to a 5 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) equity raising that is to boost its capital and allow it to repay a government bailout this year. The bank said in a statement the share sale would give it a strong enough “capital buffer” to withstand EU bank stress tests in the current climate of “high uncertainty and limited visibility.” The increase will also allow the lender to speed up a restructuring plan, due to be completed by 2017, that includes 8,000 job cuts and the closure of 550 branches. The Tuscan bank has to pay back by the end of the year some 4 billion euros in credit it received from the Italian government last year to stave off bankruptcy.
AUTOMAKERS
Fiat to make Jeeps in China
Fiat SpA plans to begin making Jeep sport utility vehicles in China, the largest market for the brand outside the US, by late next year after reaching an agreement with local partner Guangzhou Automobile Group Co (廣州汽車集團). Turin-based Fiat, which bought full control of Jeep producer Chrysler Group LLC, and Guangzhou Auto are to produce three new Jeep vehicles in Guangzhou, Chrysler said on Friday in a statement. The joint venture will soon finalize its production plans, which include the consideration of a Jeep model designed for China, it said. “Today’s announcement represents the next chapter in the proper utilization and expansion on a global scale of the Jeep brand,” Fiat chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne said in the statement.
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