PHARMACEUTICALS
Merck drops cancer drug
Merck KGaA, Germany’s second-largest listed pharmaceutical company, said it would not seek approval for its experimental cancer drug evofosfamide after the medicine failed in late-stage clinical trials. The drug, when combined with standard treatments, did not help patients with pancreatic cancer or soft-tissue sarcoma live longer than those given the standard medicine alone, Merck said in a statement yesterday. CEO Karl-Ludwig Kley is betting on the company’s acquisition of chemical firm Sigma-Aldrich Corp. to reduce Merck’s dependence on its pharmaceuticals unit after more than 10 years of failing to develop a new drug.
ENERGY
Glencore cuts output, jobs
Glencore PLC, the world’s biggest shipper of power-station coal, is cutting production and more than three-quarters of the jobs at a mine in Australia’s Queensland State after a plunge in prices. The company is to start cutting by March about 180 of 230 jobs at the Collinsville coal mine, it said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The mine is taking further steps to reduce production, though the company did not give a number. Glencore said earlier this year it would cut annual output at Collinsville by 2 million tonnes to 2.8 million tonnes.
ENERGY
Bank sees oil at US$60
Now is the time to buy oil, as OPEC members suffering swollen fiscal deficits will be prompted to curb output, said France Societe Generale SA, which predicts a price rebound next year. Brent crude is expected to climb to US$60 a barrel at the end of next year, as production cuts by OPEC members should help balance supply and demand, the bank said yesterday, while recommending increasing exposure to oil-related assets with a view that commodity prices are bottoming out. OPEC last week abandoned the idea of limiting production to control prices as Saudi Arabia stuck to its one-year-old policy of pumping until rivals are squeezed out of the market.
TRANSPORTATION
CMA bids for NOL
French transportation firm CMA CGM SA yesterday said it had offered to buy Singapore-based container liner Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) in a bid to “cement” its position as a global leader in shipping. The deal, announced in a filing with the Singapore Exchange, where NOL is listed, values the Singapore container firm at about S$3.4 billion (US$2.4 billion). However, the offer needs to fulfill some preconditions, mainly the approval of anti-trust authorities, within a year after yesterday’s announcement, the filing said.
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