SHIPBUILDERS
S Korea aims for turnaround
South Korean President Park Geun-hye yesterday urged “bone-crushing” efforts to overhaul the nation’s ailing shipbuilders faced with mounting losses caused by slowing global demand and increased competition. The nation’s mighty shipbuilders including Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering have dominated the global market for past decades. However, a slump in oil prices and global economic slowdown sapped demand for tankers and container ships, while overcapacity, regional rivalry and the emergence of cheaper Chinese shipbuilders has squeezed profit margins. The South Korean government and creditor banks, including state-run Korea Development Bank, have urged intense restructuring efforts including mass job cuts.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Women’s progress lamented
It will take 30 years at the current pace of change for women to attain just 30 percent of the seats on executive committees in the financial services industry globally, an Oliver Wyman report said yesterday. Globally women account for only one-fifth of boards and 16 percent of executive committees in financial services, the management consultancy said. Thirty percent is the level at which research suggests a minority’s voice can be heard and a separate initiative called The 30 Percent Club campaigns for a similar global target for company boards. Female executives in financial services are 20 to 30 percent more likely to leave their employers than their peers in other industries, citing inflexible working hours, inequalities in promotion and pay, and unconscious bias, the report found.
MACROECONOMICS
Analysts see Japan stimulus
Most economists think that the Bank of Japan is getting close to expanding its record monetary stimulus program. What they cannot agree on is whether Governor Haruhiko Kuroda will lead his policy board to take action at a meeting this week, or when they gather again next month. A majority of 55 percent forecast more easing on July 29, while 27.5 percent project a change as soon as Thursday, according to a Bloomberg survey of 40 economists conducted from Monday to Friday last week. When it does adjust policy, increased purchases of exchange-traded funds and a deeper cut to negative interest rates are seen as the two most likely measures. Just under half expect a boost to the government-bond purchase program that’s the core of the current easing program.
STOCKS
Lotte Group gives up IPO
South Korea’s Lotte Group yesterday said it was scrapping an initial public offering (IPO) worth almost US$4 billion amid a widening investigation into alleged embezzlement by its founding family. Hotel Lotte — the group’s key unit — had planned to list shares worth at least 4.6 trillion won (US$3.92 billion) on Seoul’s main stock market next month. However, the firm decided to “cancel all the remaining process” and postpone the IPO due to “recent internal and external circumstances,” according to its regulatory filing. The Seoul-based group, founded in Tokyo in 1948 by Shin Kyuk-ho, has a vast network of businesses in South Korea and Japan including department stores, hotels and processed food, with combined assets valued at more than US$90 billion. However, the group has been rocked by widening probes into the Shin family. They face allegations of embezzlement and creating secret slush funds worth tens of millions of US dollars.
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