Walmart Inc said it is committed to building its Japanese business, downplaying media reports that the retailing giant plans to sell its Seiyu chain.
“Walmart has not made a decision to sell Seiyu; we are not in any discussions with prospective buyers,” the company said in an e-mailed statement. “We continue to build our Japan business towards the future to meet the changing needs of customers there.”
The Nikkei Shimbun on Thursday reported that Walmart plans to sell Seiyu to several logistics companies and investment funds for as much as ¥500 billion (US$4.4 billion).
RESTRUCTURING
The world’s largest retailer has been reshaping its international operations. In recent months, it has sold a majority stake in its Brazilian business, agreed to cede control of its British chain Asda and spent US$16 billion to acquire India’s e-commerce leader Flipkart Group in its biggest-ever deal.
Judith McKenna, who took the helm of Walmart’s US$120 billion international business earlier this year, said during a press conference in late May that she was “happy” with Seiyu’s performance.
She added that the business was “in the middle of a transformation” with a bigger focus on grocery sales and the alliance with Rakuten Inc.
Separately, Walmart is considering moving its branded credit-card business to Capital One Financial Corp from Synchrony Financial as it seeks to expand its mobile payments offering, people familiar with the matter said.
Walmart has narrowed the competition for its credit-card partnership to bids from the two lenders, the people said.
WALMART PAY
The negotiations are still ongoing, but the retailer is seeking a partner that can support its aspirations for Walmart Pay, the people said.
Cobrand and private label credit cards are a lucrative business for banks and retailers seeking to monetize a cardholder’s loyalty to a certain brand or store.
The Walmart card is the largest program in the US up for renegotiation between this year and next year, analysts at Susquehanna Financial Group said.
“There’s a lot of appetite among banks in this area,” Susquehanna analyst Jamie Friedman said.
The lenders attach “scarcity value” to strong retailers such as Walmart, which is known for having a deep understanding of customers’ buying habits, he 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