COMMUNICATIONS
Reliance to buy Sistema unit
Indian billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd agreed to buy AFK Sistema’s Indian wireless unit in an all-stock deal that would create a carrier with 118 million subscribers. Sistema, controlled by Russian tycoon Vladimir Evtushenkov, will hold about a 10 percent stake in the merged entity and pay off its Indian unit’s existing debt before closing the deal, Reliance Communications said in a statement to exchanges. The discussions between the two parties had been going on since June. The deal marks the start of consolidation in the world’s second-largest wireless market where stiff competition between 12 carriers for more than 988 million subscribers, has resulted in tariffs that are among the lowest globally.
WIRELESS
SK Telecom earnings drop
A service fee price war with archrivals saw South Korea’s top wireless operator, SK Telecom, hemorrhage profits in the third quarter, according to a company earnings report yesterday. SK Telecom and two other major players in South Korea’s small and saturated wireless market have focused all their efforts on competing for domestic customer share after efforts to go global stalled. Earlier this year, the company rolled out a series of discounts in monthly and subscription fees to counter similar moves by rivals KT and LG Uplus. The company’s net profit for July to last month amounted to 381.8 billion won (US$334.8 million), down 28.1 percent from a year earlier, the Seoul-based firm said in a statement. Operating profit fell 8.6 percent to 490.6 billion won during the same period, while sales also sagged 2.4 percent to 4.2 trillion won.
KAZAKHSTAN
Aide named bank chairman
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev named his aide Daniyar Akishev as central bank chairman yesterday, replacing Kairat Kelimbetov after just two years in the job. The reshuffle, quickly approved by the Senate upper chamber, follows a sharp depreciation of the Kazakh tenge, which has lost about a third of its value against the US dollar since the central bank abandoned its pegged exchange rate policy on Aug. 20. The policy change was a response to the sharp drop in the price of oil, Kazakhstan’s main export, and devaluations carried out by the Central Asian state’s major trading partners, Russia and China, as their economic growth slowed. The central bank resumed interventions on the foreign exchange market in mid-September and has since spent at least US$1.7 billion on protecting the tenge from what it described as overshooting driven by speculation. New chairman Akishev, 39, worked at the central bank for 18 years before joining Nazarbayev’s administration last year.
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan predicts profit rise
Nissan Motor Co yesterday raised its full-year profit forecast as Japan’s second-largest automaker benefits from an increase in demand in the US. Net income might rise to ¥535 billion (US$4.4 billion) in the 12 months through March from ¥457.6 billion a year earlier, Nissan said. That is up from the company’s ¥485 billion forecast made in May. That compares with the ¥534 billion average of 26 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company also raised its operating income forecast to ¥730 billion from ¥675 billion. Nissan is benefiting from a robust US market that registered the fastest pace of sales growth in more than a decade, offsetting weak demand in Japan and China. The automaker boosted US deliveries faster than rivals.
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