MANUFACTURING
German output rebounds
Official data show that German factory production rebounded in July, another sign that Europe’s biggest economy should return to growth in the third quarter. The federal statistics office Destatis said yesterday that production rose 1.9 percent in July compared with June. It revised the previous month’s increase up to 0.4 percent from an initial reading of 0.3 percent. July’s increase was driven by all sectors except for energy.
INSURANCE
MetLife added to SIFI list
US financial regulators on Thursday put insurer MetLife Inc on its list of systemically important financial institutions (SIFI), setting it up for tougher capital standards. MetLife immediately objected to the preliminary designation by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, arguing that it had a record of remaining strong during the financial crisis and that, if it did fail, it would not pose a danger overall to the US financial system.
ENERGY
Nicaragua to search for oil
Nicaragua said on Thursday it has reached a deal with two European energy exploration firms, the UK’s Geoex and Norway’s Statoil, to search for oil and gas off its Pacific coast. The agreement allows the two companies to conduct studies to determine the location and amount of oil and gas off its Pacific coast, surveying an area of about 32,000km2.
MALAYSIA
Palm oil export taxes cut
Malaysia, the world’s largest palm oil producer after Indonesia, scrapped an export tax on the crude variety for two months aiming to boost shipments and reverse a decline in prices that are at a five-year low. Shipments of crude palm oil for this month and next month would not attract a levy, the Ministry of Plantation Industries and Commodities said on Thursday. The Malaysian government earlier set the tax at 4.5 percent for this month. The tariff exemption is set to increase exports by 600,000 metric tonnes and help contain stockpiles at 1.6 million tonnes by the end of the year, the ministry said.
MEDIA
Bloomberg sells data firm
BloombergFinancial data and news provider Bloomberg LP sold its Bloomberg Sports analysis division to data firm STATS LLC, the companies said on Thursday, marking the end of Bloomberg’s four-year foray into the world of athletic number crunching. The companies declined to comment on terms, but a source close to the deal said the price was between US$15 million and US$20 million. The deal is STATS’ first since being purchased in June by Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm with about US$13 billion in capital commitments. Separately, Bloomberg said on Wednesday that founder and majority owner Michael Bloomberg would return to the company at the end of the year, replacing Daniel Doctoroff as chief executive officer.
ENTERTAINMENT
DreamWorks CEO resigns
Steven Spielberg’s struggling live-action movie company, DreamWorks Studios, announced on Thursday that it would part ways with its longtime chief executive officer and named a former television executive to succeed her. The new chief executive officer, Michael Wright, 52, is set to join DreamWorks Studios in early January, taking the reins from Stacey Snider, who has worked beside Spielberg since 2006 to critical if inconsistent commercial acclaim. Snider, 53, is widely expected to move to a senior job at 20th Century Fox.
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