MEDIA
Economist deal reached
Pearson has agreed to sell its 50 percent stake in the publisher of the Economist magazine for £469 million (US$698 million). Italian investment group Exor SpA has agreed to pay £287 million for 27.8 percent of the Economist Group, plus so-called B shares that give it the right to appoint six of the 13 board members. The Economist Group itself will pay £182 million for the remainder of the Pearson stake. Exor, controlled by the Agnelli family, already owned just under 5 percent of the Economist Group.
STEEL
Chinese output declines
Chinese crude steel output fell 4.6 percent to 65.84 million tonnes last month from a year ago, government data showed yesterday, as steel mills in the world’s top producer faced tumbling prices and faltering demand. Average daily output stood at 2.124 million tonnes, down 7.6 percent from June, its lowest since November last year, according to Reuters calculations based on data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
BRAZIL
Moody downgrades rating
Moody’s on Tuesday cut the nation’s credit rating to near junk, reflecting growing struggles with debt and looming recession in the seventh-largest economy in the world. Moody’s Investors Service said it downgraded the government’s bond rating to “Baa3” from “Baa2.” However, the agency also said in a statement that it had “changed the outlook on the rating to stable from negative.” On July 18, Stand and Poor’s credit rating agency lowered its rating on the government’s bonds to “BBB-”.
AUTOMAKERS
Quarrel over Alphabet
Germany’s BMW AG on Tuesday said that it was checking the “trademark implications” of Google Inc naming its new parent company Alphabet, which is the registered name of one of the automaker’s subsidiaries. The move surprised Munich-based BMW, which has for years run a subsidiary with the same name that provides corporate car fleet services. It has the Internet domain name www.alphabet.com, while Google’s new parent company has the address www.abc.xyz.
TRADE
TPP deal ‘likely to fail’
Australian Minister for Trade and Investment Andrew Robb yesterday said the last negotiating stages of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact were “very difficult,” with the deal more likely to fail when the US presidential election cycle kicks in. The most recent round of talks — billed to be the last — failed to reach aagreement last month. “I think it’s still doable,” Robb told the National Press Club in Canberra. “We did really get very close, but ... the last few yards are very difficult.” Robb said if two key issues — auto trade and dairy — were resolved, it would only take several days of negotiations to finalize the deal, but the timing of such agreements was crucial.
PHILIPPINES
San Miguel posts losses
Top conglomerate San Miguel, known best for its beer brewing business, yesterday said its first-half profit fell 8 percent as a weak peso inflated debt costs. Interim net income dropped to 16.9 billion pesos (US$251 million) between January and June, from 18.4 billion pesos during the same period last year, the company said in a stock exchange filing. Not counting foreign exchange losses, net profit for the period rose 15 percent to 18 billion pesos, it said.
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],”