AGRICULTURE
Dairy farm sale approved
A Chinese investor was yesterday given the green light to buy Australia’s largest dairy farm company, with Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison saying he welcomed foreign investment “not contrary to our national interests.” The sale of farmland to foreigners, including to Australia’s biggest trading partner, China, has been a sensitive issue, with Canberra in November blocking the sale of one of the world’s largest cattle estates to Chinese companies. Chinese businessman Lu Xianfeng (盧先鋒), who owns an Australian window blind maker and founded a Shenzhen-listed engineering company, made a A$280 million (US$202 million) bid for the Tasmanian-based and New Zealand-owned dairy business in November. Morrison said Tasmanian Land Co — which owns the 190-year-old dairy business Van Diemen’s Land Co — had always been held by foreigners. Lu said in a statement he was committing to expanding the business, which owns and operates 25 dairy farms, including about 30,000 livestock, and increasing its workforce.
INTERNET
Google Compare shuttered
Google Inc is shuttering Google Compare, its US comparison-shopping site for auto insurance, credit cards and mortgages, after one year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The quick reversal is a setback to the Alphabet unit’s efforts to use its enormous reach to provide consumers with niche shopping services and financial-services tools. The firm said in an e-mail to its partners on Monday that Google Compare’s US and UK services would start winding down this month and terminate on March 23, the report said. Google said the service did not meet its expectations and that it would now focus on AdWords and future innovations, the paper reported, citing the e-mail.
AIRLINES
Qantas posts record profit
Qantas Airways Ltd posted a record first-half profit and announced its second capital return in less than six months, as chief executive officer Alan Joyce’s cost-cutting program and lower fuel prices boosted Australia’s largest airline. Underlying pretax profit in the six months ended Dec. 31 more than doubled to A$921 million from A$367 million the previous year, Qantas said in a statement yesterday. Analysts expected an underlying profit of A$908.7 million, according to the average estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Joyce said he has no plans to step down from the role that he has held since 2008 as a A$2 billion turnaround program announced two years ago continues to bear fruit. The Sydney-based airline yesterday announced a stock buyback of as much as A$500 million, taking the capital return to more than A$1 billion since August.
BANKING
Standard loses US$2.36bn
Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered yesterday said it swung to a US$2.36 billion net loss last year against a backdrop of global market volatility, restructuring costs and bad loans. Chairman John Peace described the performance as “poor” in what he called a watershed year, which saw the bank say it would axe 15,000 jobs under new CEO Bill Winters. Pre-tax profit plunged 84 percent to US$834 million last year, well short of estimates by 20 analysts polled by Bloomberg, who forecast US$1.37 billion. The bank’s underlying loan impairment soared 87 percent to US$4 billion. It said the bad loans were driven by “falling commodity prices and deterioration in financial markets in India.”
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],”
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
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