REAL ESTATE
Chinese home prices rise 6.2%
China’s home prices last month posted their fastest growth in two years, with gains in regional centers indicating a broader recovery in the nation’s housing market beyond the major cities. Average new home prices in 70 cities climbed 6.2 percent from a year ago, up from March’s 4.9 percent rise, according to Reuters’ calculations based on data released yesterday by China’s National Statistics Bureau. That was the quickest year-on-year increase since April 2014, while 46 of 70 major cities tracked by the bureau saw annual price gains, increasing from 40 in March.
APPAREL
Burberry plans restructuring
British luxury fashion group Burberry said it would overhaul its retail operations and simplify its product range after its full-year profit fell 10 percent. It said it expected the market to remain challenging this year, meaning profit is likely to come in toward the bottom of market forecasts, and more weighted to the second half than last year. The group, famous for its trench coats, reported adjusted pretax profit of £21 million (US$609 million) for the year ending March, broadly in line with analysts’ forecasts.
BREWING
SABMiller profit falls 18%
British brewer SABMiller PLC yesterday announced a drop in annual net profit, hit in part by costs linked to its upcoming takeover by sector leader Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. After-tax profit dropped 18 percent to US$2.7 billion in its fiscal year that ended March 31, the maker of Foster’s lager said in an earnings statement. That compared with net profit of US$3.3 billion in the previous fiscal year.
AIRLINES
Singapore Air restructures
Singapore Airlines Ltd, seeking to restructure its budget airline business, established a new holding company to manage its two low-fare carriers amid speculation of a consolidation in the region. Budget Aviation Holdings Pte is to control long-haul carrier Scoot and short-haul carrier Tiger Airways, allowing for greater integration and sharing of operations and planning, Singapore Air said in a statement yesterday. The new structure comes after Southeast Asia’s biggest airline by market value took Tiger Airways private by buying out small shareholders.
INVESTMENT
Goldman eyes Australia exit
Goldman Sachs Asset Management is considering exiting its Australian investment business, according to a document detailing the plans. The fund manager, which oversees about A$9 billion (US$6.6 billion) in Australia, is reviewing options, including a sale or a management buyout, according to a person familiar with the talks. The business includes equities and fixed income, with a staff of about 40. The Australian equities team is led by Dion Hershan in Melbourne.
INVESTMENT
Hotel Lotte plans IPO
Hotel Lotte Co, the key lodgings and duty-free unit of South Korea’s Lotte Group, is planning for its initial public offering (IPO) to raise as much as 5.7 trillion won (US$4.8 billion) in what could be the largest IPO in the country, Korea Economic Daily reported yesterday, citing unidentified investment bankers. The company, which plans to submit a prospectus to South Korean regulators today, would be valued at 16.4 trillion won based on the high end of that range, the report said.
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