AUTOMOTIVE
Takata shares plunge 20%
Takata’s shares plunged 20 percent in Tokyo yesterday after a report that the recall-related costs facing the Japanese airbag supplier could be as high as US$24 billion. Citing a person familiar with the matter, Bloomberg News said the company estimated the “worst-case” scenario would involve the recall of 287.5 million airbag inflators at a cost of as much as ¥2.7 trillion (US$24 billion). Takata and its automaker clients are still hashing out how the costs would be shared, the source said.
AEROSPACE
Boeing to cut 4,000 jobs
Boeing Co plans to cut about 4,000 jobs from its commercial airplane division by mid-year, as part of a broader effort to reduce costs amid fierce competition from Airbus Group SE. The US planemaker does not plan any involuntary layoffs for now; rather, the savings would come from 1,600 workers who elected to leave the company under a voluntary program announced last month, Marc Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, said by e-mail. Another 2,400 positions are either vacant or are to be shed through attrition.
MALAYSIA
1MDB to repay US$1.5bn
The state investment firm at the center of multiple financial probes said it would repay 6 billion ringgit (US$1.5 billion) in coming weeks as asset sales give it room to pare down debt. 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) will not have any more short-term debt and bank loans after the repayments, 1MDB president Arul Kanda said in an interview yesterday at the fund’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. It will have a cash surplus of at least 2.3 billion ringgit after settling the debt, he said.
ISRAEL
Executives salaries capped
The government has introduced one of the world’s toughest curbs on bank executives’ salaries to try to narrow a big gap between bosses’ and workers’ pay. The law, pushed through by Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon, was approved in parliament overnight in a 56-0 vote and is to take effect in six months. Under the new law, which also applies to insurance firms, total compensation will be capped at 2.5 million shekels (US$652,605) a year, or no more than 44 times the salary of the lowest worker at the company. Anything above the ceiling will be subject to higher taxes.
AUTOMAKERS
Tavares salary sparks ire
A decision by PSA Peugeot Citroen SA to double its chairman’s salary to 5 million euros has sparked angry debate in France, with French Minister of Finance Michel Sapin on Tuesday describing the raise as “harmful.” Carlos Tavares, chairman of Europe’s second-biggest carmaker, earned 5.24 million euros (US$5.8 million) last year, up from 2.75 million euros in 2014, company documents showed last week. As criticism rose over the move, Sapin said the government, which has a 13 percent stake in the company, asked its representatives to vote against the salary increase.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Snapchat adds features
Snapchat Inc, operator of a popular social-messaging app, released an update that bolstered its chat function with multimedia features, including voice and video calling and digital stickers. Los Angeles-based Snapchat on Tuesday said Chat 2.0 emulates “face-to-face communication,” while making it easier to switch between video chatting, texting and calling. WhatsApp introduced voice — but not video — calls last year.
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