PROPERTY
London homes unaffordable
London homes are less affordable than ever before, despite slowing price growth and government attempts to cut the cost of housing for first-time buyers. It now costs the average Londoner 14.5 times their annual salary to purchase a home, the highest level on record, according to a report yesterday by researcher Hometrack. Cambridge, Oxford and the English seaside town of Bournemouth also have price-to-earnings ratios in the double digits, the report showed. “Unaffordability in London has reached a record high, despite a material slowdown in the rate of house-price growth over the last year,” Hometrack research director Richard Donnell said in an interview. “The gap between average earnings and house prices in the capital has never been wider.”
BANKING
Metrobank officials punished
The Philippine central bank sanctioned Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co after the regulator investigated an alleged internal fraud that cost the lender 1.75 billion pesos (US$35 million). Sanctions ranged from a reprimand to the suspension of directors and officials who were complacent in their duties, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said, without naming them. The nation’s second-largest lender was also ordered to allocate about 4.45 billion pesos of its capital to cover higher operational risk, the central bank said in a statement. Police in July arrested a Metrobank official after she was suspected of funneling loans into fictitious accounts that were transferred electronically to other private accounts she owned.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Temasek mulls stake sale
Temasek Holdings Pte is exploring a sale of its stake in Asian drug distributor Zuellig Pharma, people familiar with the matter said. The Singapore state investment firm has been speaking with advisers about a potential sale of its 20 percent stake in Zuellig Pharma, which commands vast pharmaceutical distribution networks in about a dozen Asian markets, the people said. Temasek could seek about US$1 billion for its holding in the Singapore-based company, the people said, asking not to be identified because the discussions are private. The stake could draw interest from strategic buyers including Mitsui & Co, the Japanese trading house that has been expanding its healthcare operations, as well as private equity firms, the people said. Zuellig Group was founded in 1922 by businessman Frederick Zuellig, who moved to Manila from Switzerland. The family trading house built out a number of different businesses and now has interests ranging from healthcare and pharmaceuticals to insurance and property, its Web site says.
RESTAURANTS
Roark to buy US chain
Roark Capital Group, the owner of Arby’s and Cinnabon, has agreed to buy restaurant chain Buffalo Wild Wings Inc for about US$2.4 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. Roark agreed to pay about US$157 a share in cash for the Minneapolis-based restaurant operator, according to the people. That would represent a premium of about 34 percent to the stock’s Nov. 13 closing price, before Roark’s opening bid of about US$150 a share was reported. A deal could be announced as soon yesterday, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The private equity firm plans to merge Buffalo Wild Wings with Arby’s, though the two brands would remain distinct. Arby’s chief executive Paul Brown would be chief executive of the combined business, the people 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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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