HOME IMPROVEMENT
Wesfarmers sells Homebase
Wesfarmers Ltd has ended its disastrous foray into the UK home-improvement market, selling its Homebase chain for a “nominal amount” and announcing a further A$406 million (US$307 million) loss on the venture. Australia’s do-it-yourself market leader yesterday said that Hilco Capital is to acquire all of its Homebase assets, including the brand, store network, freehold property and inventory for an undisclosed sum. Wesfarmers, the nation’s largest private employer, bought Homebase chain for £340 million (US$454 million) in January 2016.
AUTOMAKERS
China mulls private stakes
China is considering encouraging state-owned automakers to bring in private automakers as investors as it seeks to create an industrial champion to compete with global peers like Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, people with direct knowledge of the matter said. A policy paper outlining the proposal is being studied by government departments, they said. The plans are preliminary and could change depending on feedback from different agencies and industry players, they said.
EQUITIES
Netflix tops Disney in value
Netflix Inc on Thursday briefly topped Walt Disney Co in market value, challenging the film, TV and theme-park giant for the title of most valuable media company. Shares of the video streaming service rose 1.3 percent to US$349.29 in New York, lifting the company’s market cap to US$151.8 billion. Disney retreated 0.8 percent, closing with a market value of US$152.2 billion. Netflix’s value has surged from about US$20 billion at the end of 2014 and surpassed the world’s most powerful media giants, Comcast Corp and Disney, this week.
BANKING
Trump eases bank rules
US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed into law the first major rollback of the post-crisis banking regulations after Congress approved the legislation this week. The law frees small and medium-sized banks from more stringent regulatory scrutiny and stress testing created under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation. The law also exempts smaller banks from the living will requirement and from the so-called Volcker Rule, which limits riskier “proprietary trading.”
UNITED KINGDOM
Q1 economy grew 0.1%
Official figures have confirmed that the UK economy barely grew in the first three months of the year, partly but not wholly because of the impact of a long protracted winter. The Office for National Statistics yesterday said the economy expanded by a quarterly rate of just 0.1 percent. It said bad weather had some impact on the economy, particularly in construction and some areas of retail, but that its overall effect was limited, with partially offsetting impacts in energy supply and online sales.
RETAIL
Gap Q1 missed expectations
Gap Inc reported that first-quarter profit missed market expectations, hurt by a deeper slump in demand for its namesake label. The San Francisco-based chain said that overall sales at established stores rose 1 percent, dragged down by a 4 percent drop at Gap. Old Navy and Banana Republic both saw sales rise 3 percent. Gap earned US$164 million, or US$0.42 per share, in the quarter ended May 5. That compares with US$143 million, or US$0.36 per share, a year earlier. Revenue was US$3.78 billion.
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],”
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
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