PUBLISHING
Forbes sells majority stake
The publisher Forbes Media on Friday agreed to sell a majority stake to a consortium of Asian investors, concluding a protracted sales process in which a number of prospective bidders dropped out. The terms were not disclosed, but the transaction values Forbes Media at US$475 million, said a person close to the deal. Forbes’ new controlling shareholders are set to be Integrated Whale Media Investments (本匯鯨媒體投資公司), a group that includes the Hong Kong investor Tak Cheung Yam (任德章) and Wayne Hsieh (謝維恩), the Singaporean cofounder of AsusTek Computer Inc (華碩). The group hopes to leverage the Forbes brand, which has retained a gloss in Asia that it has lost in the US, to do deals in real estate, business clubs and financial services.
MANUFACTURING
GE reports industrial growth
General Electric Co (GE) reported second-quarter results on Friday that reflected a steady return to its industrial roots, as the giant conglomerate looks to accelerate the shift. GE, the largest industrial company in the US, said revenue from its industrial businesses, with products including jet engines, power generators, oil field machinery and medical imaging equipment, rose 7 percent. Revenue at its sizable finance unit, GE Capital, declined 6 percent. GE also announced on Friday that it intended to spin out its North American consumer-finance business, Synchrony Financial, in an initial public offering late this month. In its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it would sell 15 percent of the business to the public, 125 million shares, with US$24.50 a share as the midpoint of the expected price range.
MACROECONOMICS
Low inflation damaging: IMF
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde warned on Friday that low inflation could damage growth in Europe and urged the European Central Bank to maintain a flexible policy. She also urged caution over asset prices, saying they could be too high in relation to fundamentals. “Obstinately low inflation can seriously undermine growth,” said Lagarde, who recently hinted that the 3.6 percent global growth forecast for this year might have to be trimmed. The “good news,” Lagarde said, was that “European economies are beginning to emerge from the crisis.”
INNOVATION
Swiss regain top spot
Switzerland has claimed the top spot on the Global Innovation Index for the fourth consecutive year, while Sub-Saharan Africa “posted significant regional improvement.” The annual rankings, which this year focused on the role people play in the innovation process, found that Switzerland and other top-ranked countries Britain, Sweden and Finland, had strong all-round support systems that led to “high levels of creativity.” Nations of the BRICS group of emerging economies such as China, Brazil and India were catching up with the developed countries, the researchers from Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization said in a statement. “China significantly outperforms the average score of high-income economies across the combined quality indicators,” they added in a report released on the sidelines of a G20 trade ministers’ meeting in Sydney.
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