AUTOMAKERS
Toyoda quits Olympic group
Toyota Motor Corp president Akio Toyoda has stepped down from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee, amid reports that costs for the event have ballooned to about six times original estimates. Toyoda said late on Monday that he would quit as vice president of the main organizing group, opting instead to support the games as head of the Keidanren’s Olympic lobbying group. The Keidanren is Japan’s biggest business federation. Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, signed a nearly US$1 billion global Olympic sponsorship deal this year.
TECHNOLOGY
Toshiba projects record loss
Toshiba Corp fell to the lowest in more than six years in Tokyo after forecasting a record ¥550 billion (US$4.5 billion) loss and announcing plans to cut more jobs as it restructures businesses. The stock finished down 12 percent at ¥223.5, its lowest since March 2009. Including a decline of 9.8 percent on Monday, the Japanese company had lost about US$2 billion of market value over the past two days.
RESTAURANTS
McDonald’s cutting stake
McDonald’s Holdings Co (Japan) fell the most in almost five years after the Nikkei Shimbun reported that its US parent plans to cut its shareholding in the loss-making unit that is struggling to recover from a series of food scandals. McDonald’s Corp, the world’s largest restaurant chain and owner of about half of the Tokyo-based company, is seeking to sell 15 percent to 33 percent of the outstanding shares and an executive has met five or so potential buyers, including trading houses and investment funds, Nikkei reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information. The stock closed down 7.85 percent at ¥2,712 — slightly off the day’s low of ¥2,710 — while the benchmark TOPIX was little changed.
SERVICES
Recruit to buy USG People
Recruit Holdings Co has agreed to buy USG People NV of the Netherlands for 1.42 billion euros (US$1.55 billion), as Japan’s biggest provider of temporary staff seeks to boost growth in Europe. Recruit is to pay offer 17.50 euros in cash for each share in Almere, Netherlands-based USG, the companies said in a statement yesterday. That is 31 percent above Monday’s closing share price. The offer has been endorsed by USG’s executive and supervisory boards. The purchase builds on Recruit’s plans to become a leader in human resources by the end of the decade.
MEDIA
Weinstein announces deal
The Weinstein Co continued the expansion of its television business with the announcement on Monday of a deal to produce and distribute shows in partnership with American Media, known for tabloid publications like the National Enquirer and Star, and reality show producer Jupiter Entertainment. The new venture is also expected to include film and digital projects, but will initially focus on unscripted television programming, the companies said. While tightening its film operation with a staff reduction and a cut in the number of releases, Weinstein has expanded its television portfolio, as part of a strategy that aims eventually to generate cash, possibly with a spinoff of the company’s television unit. Earlier this year, Weinstein had been involved in a possible deal to sell its TV unit to ITV of Britain, but that transaction faltered.
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