SOCCER
Wanda touts sponsorship
Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group (萬達集團) said becoming a FIFA World Cup top-tier sponsor gives it potential to help decide where future editions of the event will be staged. A Wanda news release said becoming one of the major sponsors for world soccer’s governing body will leave it “better placed to play a role in the bidding process to host major football events such as the World Cup.” Chinese leaders said they want to host the World Cup, adding the world’s biggest soccer event to the 2008 Summer Beijing Olympics and the upcoming 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
CHEMICALS
Synthomer to buy units
Synthomer PLC agreed to buy an adhesives and coatings business from Hexion Inc for US$226 million to drive expansion in the US and Asia. The purchase adds seven factories generating annual sales of US$370 million and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of US$30 million, the Harlow, England-based company said in a statement yesterday. Synthomer is paying a multiple of 7.5 times earnings, excluding estimated annualized cost savings from integrating the business of about US$12 million.
RETAIL
X5 Retail shares fall
X5 Retail Group NV, Russia’s second-largest retailer, fell the most in six weeks after quarterly profit missed analysts’ estimates because of management bonus payouts. Fourth-quarter earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization slid to 13.5 billion rubles (US$196 million), or 5.8 percent of sales, the retailer said in a statement. That missed Interfax estimates for a 7.3 percent margin. Former chief executive officer Stephan DuCharme received 916 million rubles in compensation last year, about a sixfold boost from his 2014 pay, thanks largely to a 440 million ruble exit payment and a long-term bonus of 399 million rubles.
AVIATION
Strike halts French flights
Up to a third of flights were canceled at French airports yesterday as air traffic controllers entered a second day of strikes. Low-cost airline Ryanair deplored what it said was the 41st strike by French air traffic controllers since 2009. About 140 passengers spent the night in Paris’s Orly airport where half of flights were canceled on the first day of strikes on Sunday. Authorities yesterday asked airlines to cut a third of flights at Orly and Marseille airports, and 20 percent at Lyon, Nice and Beauvais near Paris. The striking union, which represents about a fifth of air traffic controllers, is campaigning against job cuts and the lack of investment in new technology.
ENERGY
German firm to cut dividend
Germany’s third-largest electricity supplier, Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG, proposed to cut its dividend even after returning to profit last year. The company proposed to reduce its dividend by 20 percent to 0.55 euros (US$0.62) per share, the Karlsruhe-based company said yesterday in a statement. The company’s net income was 124.9 million euros compared with a net loss of 465.9 million euros a year earlier. The company wrote down the value of its traditional power generators by about 700 million euros last year as renewable energy increased to about 30 percent of national generation, pushing electricity prices to the lowest in more than a decade.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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