INVESTMENTS
Buffett’s firm sells GE stake
Warren Buffett’s company has eliminated its stake in General Electric (GE) and boosted its investment in the Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon Corp. Berkshire Hathaway on Monday revealed those moves and several other changes to its US stock portfolio in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Berkshire did not list any GE shares in its holdings at the end of June. Previously, it owned 10.6 million shares. The company in Omaha, Nebraska, increased its stake in BNY Mellon to 50.2 million shares from 33 million in March. It also adjusted its airline investments by trimming its stakes in American Airlines, Delta and United Continental, but did not change its investment in Southwest Airlines. Berkshire officials do not generally comment on the quarterly filings or the reasons for their portfolio moves.
MEDIA
Pandora taps new CEO
Music service Pandora Media Inc on Monday named a new CEO as it wrestles with competition from Spotify and other newer streaming apps. Roger Lynch, the head of Dish’s streaming video service, is to take over the helm of the Oakland, California, company on Sept. 18. Pandora said Lynch is the right leader because he has worked with media firms on new distribution models. He is the founding CEO of Dish’s Sling TV, which was launched in 2015 as one of the first apps to bundle live TV for the Internet. Pandora was founded 17 years ago and has primarily been a free Internet radio service making money from ads. However, its user base has stagnated and its financial losses deepened as new competitors have gained steam. It has launched new subscription products over the past year, including one that copies Spotify, Apple Music and other apps by letting users pick the songs they want to listen to.
LOGISTICS
Target eyes Grand Junction
Target on Monday said it is buying a delivery logistics company to help it offer same-day delivery service to in-store shoppers. Software made by San Francisco-based Grand Junction connects retailers with about 700 delivery companies around the country that pick up items from stores or distribution centers and take them to customers. Expanding delivery and making it faster have been key areas for retailers trying to attract convenience-seeking shoppers. Target and Walmart have adjusted their shipping programs as they try to lure online shoppers away from Amazon. Target’s latest move is aimed not at online shoppers, but at making buying an easier decision for in-store shoppers. The firm has been working with Grand Junction to test same-day delivery at a New York store.
EQUITIES
Vietnam trading disrupted
A malfunction yesterday struck Vietnam’s main stock exchange, briefly halting trading in the morning session. The Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange experienced “some errors with distribution of market data,” the bourse said in an e-mailed statement. The glitch occurred five days after the start of derivatives trading in Vietnam. The benchmark VN-30 Index was little changed before the disruption. Viet Capital Securities JS vice general director Nguyen Quang Bao said that while there were some complaints from investors, the disruption did not last long enough to have a big impact. Tran Tien Dung, a 45 year-old Hanoi-based day trader, said the short disruption time eased problems. “It was a bit annoying when we couldn’t check the prices, but it didn’t really affect my trading because it wasn’t very long,” Dung 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