ENTERTAINMENT
Sony dismisses sale rumor
Sony Corp has no plans to sell the music publishing business that controls rights to songs from The Beatles and Taylor Swift, as was suggested by leaked e-mails, Sony Entertainment chief executive officer Michael Lynton said in an interview on Thursday. The firm’s music-publishing business, the largest in the world, has a catalog of more than 2 million songs. E-mails and documents released in the cyberattack on Sony mentioned a “top secret” plan to sell the music publishing business because it had few growth prospects, Bloomberg News reported last month. Top management at Tokyo-based Sony was concerned about the complex ownership and governance of the business.
RETAIL
Toys “R” Us sees sales fall
Toys “R” Us Inc on Friday posted a decline in holiday sales for at least the third year in a row. Same-store sales for the nine weeks through Jan. 4 fell 2.7 percent, as the chain used fewer promotions to protect profitability, the Wayne, New Jersey-based company said in a statement. Revenue by that measure declined 5 percent in the US, where it generates about 60 percent of its sales. The world’s largest toy chain has struggled to boost sales amid more competition from Amazon.com and a sluggish toy industry that is losing kids to electronics earlier than ever.
ECONOMY
Turkmen bank head let go
Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov has fired the heads of the country’s central bank and its natural gas company in the wake of economic troubles that brought the country’s currency down 18.5 percent this year, the Central Asian country’s state media reported on Saturday. The authoritarian leader said “difficult financial and economic circumstances in certain countries directly affect Turkmenistan.” That appeared to be a reference to Russia, where the ruble has lost about 45 percent of its value under pressure from falling oil prices and Western sanctions. Turkmenistan on Jan. 1 devalued the Turkmen new manat from 2.85 to the US dollar to 3.5.
ECONOMY
Court finds Alex Hope guilty
A London man who cheated investors out of more than £5 million (US$7.6 million) in a fraudulent currency-trading scheme, spending the money at casinos and nightclubs, was found guilty of fraud by a London jury on Friday. Alex Hope took more than £5 million from investors between March 2011 and April 2012, and spent £2 million himself, including £950,000 at casinos, prosecutors said. Hope had already pleaded guilty to operating a collective investment scheme without authorization, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said in a statement. He will be sentenced on Friday at London’s Southwark Crown Court.
PHARMACEUTICALS
China to allow online market
China will allow online sales of prescription drugs as early as this month, a policy that will open up a more than 1 trillion yuan (US$161 billion) market to online pharmacy operators like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) is finalizing which prescription medicines to approve for sale, a senior healthcare policy adviser told reporters. “The policy will be released in January or February and the CFDA is actively working on it,” said the adviser, who was not authorized to speak with media on the matter and so declined to be identified.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”