MACROECONOMICS
Japan inflation edges up
Japan’s inflation edged up marginally last month, government data showed yesterday. Consumer prices rose 0.8 percent year-on-year, compared with 0.7 percent in May. The marginal rise was in line with market expectations, but inflation is still far short of the central bank’s longstanding 2 percent goal. With fresh food and energy stripped out, prices rose by even less, just 0.2 year-on-year last month, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
MEDIA
Comcast drops Fox bid
Comcast Corp is dropping its bid for 21st Century Fox Inc’s entertainment businesses, paving the way for Walt Disney Co to boost its upcoming streaming service by buying the studios behind The Simpsons and X-Men. Comcast can now focus on its pursuit of European pay-TV operator Sky PLC, a deal that would give the Philadelphia-based cable and media company a larger presence outside the US. Comcast on Thursday siad that it would not raise its US$66 billion offer for Fox. Disney had topped Comcast’s bid by offering US$71 billion.
SOFTWARE
Microsoft profit up on cloud
Microsoft Corp on Thursday reported quarterly profit of US$8.9 billion, boosted in part by its efforts to rival Amazon.com Inc as a key cloud computing provider for retailers and other businesses. Microsoft said it had net income of US$1.14 per share in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended June 30. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring gains, were US$1.13 per share. The increase in net income was 10 percent. The software maker also surpassed forecasts by posting revenue of US$30.1 billion in the period, a 17 percent increase over the same time last year.
LUXURY GOODS
China drives Hermes profit
Hermes International said that first-half profitability would probably match last year’s record high as a boom in Chinese luxury demand showed no signs of slowing. Second-quarter sales rose 12 percent excluding currency swings to 1.46 billion euros (US$1.7 billion), Paris-based Hermes said in a statement yesterday. Analysts had expected 1.44 billion euros. The company forecast a first-half margin excluding non-recurring items near the year-earlier level.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Gland mulls IPO
A unit of Fosun International Ltd (復星國際) is considering an initial public offering (IPO) of Indian drugmaker Gland Pharma Ltd, people with knowledge of the matter said. Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co (上海復星醫藥集團) is in preliminary talks with potential advisers about an Indian IPO for Gland, the people said. The share sale could raise about US$500 million, they said. Deliberations are at an early stage, and any listing is unlikely to take place before next year, the people said.
TECHNOLOGY
Google plans Atlantic cable
Google says it will string a trans-Atlantic cable from France to Virginia. The Web giant said in a statement this week that the undersea cable would land stateside in Virginia Beach. It is expected to become operational in 2020. Google said the project would better serve customers with an expanded network. The cable will also support growth of Google Cloud and it will land in relative proximity to Google’s planned data center in northern Virginia.
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