INSURANCE
Zhong An taking IPO orders
Zhong An Online P&C Insurance Co (眾安保險), China’s largest online insurer, started taking orders for a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) that could raise as much as US$1.5 billion. The Shanghai-based company is offering 199.3 million shares at HK$53.70 to HK$59.70 apiece, according to terms for the deal. Japan’s Softbank Group Corp agreed to purchase 71.9 million shares, worth as much as US$550 million, as the sole cornerstone investor in the offering, the terms show. Zhong An raised 5.8 billion yuan (US$884 million) from a group of investors including Morgan Stanley and China International Capital Corp in a 2015 funding round. That share sale valued the company at 49.6 billion yuan, Zhong An said at the time.
MEDIA
Rolling Stone signals change
The owner of Rolling Stone said the magazine is exploring strategic options for its majority stake, signaling that cofounder Jann Wenner is preparing to relinquish control of the half-century-old iconic music publication. Wenner Media LLC hired Methuselah Advisors, the company said in a statement late on Sunday. The company did not say whether Wenner is in talks with any potential suitors. The announcement comes nearly a year after Wenner announced the sale of a 49 percent stake in the magazine to Singapore-based BandLab Technologies, a budding digital music company cofounded by the scion of one of Asia’s richest families.
AVIATION
Ryanair shares fall 3%
Ryanair Ltd shares fell 3 percent yesterday in early trading following its announcement late on Friday of plans to cancel 40 to 50 flights per day until the end of next month, disrupting hundreds of thousands of journeys. Ryanair said it was trying to deal with a backlog of staff leave, which must be allocated before the end of the year, and described the number of canceled flights — which started immediately — as “unacceptable” to customers. If the airline cancels 40 flights per day for six weeks, about 285,000 journeys would be affected, assuming a load factor of 90 percent.
AUTOMAKERS
Ford partners with Mahindra
Ford Motor Co, seeking to increase its foothold in India, teamed up with local sport utility vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd to explore a partnership for electric vehicles and other models. Ford and Mahindra aim to cooperate in areas including mobility programs, connected vehicle projects, electrification and distribution within India, improving Ford’s reach within the nation, Mumbai-based Mahindra said in a stock exchange statement. The partnership is for three years and future plans would be decided at the end of that term, it said.
AUTOMAKERS
Canada GM workers strike
Canadian autoworkers employed by General Motors (GM) at a key assembly plant in Ontario yesterday went on strike after GM and negotiators from Unifor Local 88 failed to reach a deal on a contract covering about 3,000 workers. The strike shuts down production at a plant that builds one of GM’s most popular vehicles, the Chevrolet Equinox utility vehicle. GM is in the midst of ramping up production of Equinox for the next model year and inventories of the vehicle are in relatively short supply. The strike involves a long-running battle between Unifor and GM over the company’s decision to move work, previously done at the CAMI plant in Ingersoll, to Mexico.
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