NEW ZEALAND
Tobacco taxes hiked
Smokers and polluters will get hit with higher taxes as part of the government’s economic plan. The government yesterday released its annual budget, forecasting that rising fiscal surpluses in coming years will allow it to begin paying down its public debt. The government plans to hike tobacco taxes by 46 percent over the next four years. Once the taxes are in place, a pack of 20 cigarettes will cost about NZ$30 (US$20). The government also announced it would end a subsidy for polluting businesses that it had introduced after the 2008 global financial crisis.
INDIA
Market to delist 4,000 firms
The market regulator plans to delist more than 4,000 listed companies whose shares are not actively traded, as it tightens supervision of Asia’s fourth-largest stock market. The cleanup includes 1,200 companies whose shares have been suspended from trading on the BSE Ltd and the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd for the past seven years, said UK Sinha, chairman of the Securities & Exchange Board of India. The 3,000 companies listed on the defunct regional bourses would also face the axe, he said. While more than 5,400 companies are listed on the BSE, the top 500 make up 95 percent of the total market value.
PETROLEUM
Firms bid for Qatar field
Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Total SA, ConocoPhillips and Maersk Oil Qatar submitted bids to operate Qatar’s biggest offshore oil field, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Qatar Petroleum received proposals from the five oil companies to enter a production sharing agreement to operate the al-Shaheen field, which produces 300,000 barrels a day, the people said. State-run Qatar Petroleum will choose an operator this year, they said.
INTERNET
AT&T bids for Yahoo
AT&T Inc has made a bid for Yahoo Inc, according to people familiar with the matter, and is a contender to acquire the Sunnyvale, California-based company’s core Internet business. The telecom giant had previously decided against making an offer, people familiar with the matter said last month. AT&T kept one foot in the process through its stake in digital advertising business YP Holdings LLC, which had proposed a merger with a subsidiary spun out of Yahoo’s core business.
SOFTWARE
Opera accepts Chinese bid
Shareholders in the Norwegian company Opera Software have accepted a bid from a Chinese consortium valuing the group at 10.5 billion kroner (US$1.2 billion), Opera announced on Wednesday. The consortium, led by Golden Brick Silk Road Investment (Shenzhen) LLP (金磚絲綢之路), still needs the approval of US and Chinese regulatory authorities before it can complete the acquisition of the world’s fifth most-used Web browser.
SHIPBUILDING
STX has cruise ship order
US cruise giant Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd on Wednesday signed a letter of intent with the French arm of South Korean shipbuilder STX to build three ships in a deal worth US$2.8 billion, the shipyard said. The three new vessels, one Oasis class and two Edge class for delivery in 2021 and 2022, represent an order worth “22 to 23 million work hours,” STX France president Laurent Castaing 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],”
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