Softbank Group Corp plans to divide its Japanese and overseas operations, splitting the responsibility for managing about ¥9.2 trillion (US$81 billion) of investments spanning the broadband and mobile industries, as well as a stake in China’s largest Internet shopping service.
Softbank president Nikesh Arora is to head up operations abroad, which includes stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Sprint Corp, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement yesterday.
Ken Miyauchi, who heads Softbank’s mobile operations in Japan, is to lead all domestic businesses, including its investment in Yahoo Japan Corp.
Billionaire Masayoshi Son, who remains group chairman and chief executive, has entrusted Arora with overseeing global expansion and the turnaround of loss-making Sprint.
Former Google executive Arora plans to invest about US$3 billion each year as Softbank backs start-ups that can become the next Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company that pulled off the world’s largest initial public offering in 2014.
“This makes perfect sense, considering how large Softbank’s overseas holdings have gotten,” Tokyo-based Nomura Holdings Inc chief credit strategist Toshihiro Uomoto said. “This may speed things up at Softbank, allowing domestic and overseas operations to race against each other.”
As of yesterday, Softbank’s domestic holdings — including Yahoo Japan and Gungho Online Entertainment Inc — were worth close to ¥1.2 trillion.
Its international investments, spanning Alibaba, Sprint and China’s Renren Inc (人人) — were valued at about ¥8 trillion as of Friday last week, according to its Web site.
Softbank shares closed 1.8 percent lower at ¥5,754 yesterday before the announcement. The stock is down 6.3 percent this year, compared with an 11 percent drop on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average.
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