TRADE
Lee Hsien Loong eyes RCEP
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) yesterday said he hoped to complete by the end of the year a massive China-backed regional trade pact. The 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is poised to become the largest free-trade agreement in the world. It would group the 10 members of the ASEAN plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
BANKING
DBS posts Q2 profit
DBS Group Holdings Ltd, Southeast Asia’s biggest lender, posted higher second-quarter profit, but failed to meet analysts’ expectations on a 32 percent drop in other non-interest income. Net income rose 20 percent to S$1.37 billion (US$1 billion) in the three months to June from S$1.14 billion a year earlier, the Singapore-based bank said yesterday. That compared with the S$1.44 billion average forecast in a Bloomberg survey of six analysts.
BANKING
ING adds 400,000 customers
ING Groep NV added 400,000 new customers in the second quarter and bounced back from disappointing fee and commission income earlier in the year to post better-than-expected results. Net commission income, which had declined because of the lender’s Belgian unit, recovered to 717 million euros in the three months through June, beating estimates. The lender also had better-than-expected profit, with chief financial officer Koos Timmermans hinting that the bank could be in a position to boost its dividend.
CONGLOMERATES
Siemens’ profit falls 14%
Falling demand for gas turbines weighed on Siemens AG’s quarterly earnings yesterday, but the German conglomerate stuck to its confident outlook as it unveiled a major revamp to make its industrial divisions more profitable. Net profit at the sprawling group plunged 14 percent to 1.2 billion euros (US$1.4 billion) in the third quarter of its financial year, compared with the same period a year earlier. Revenue at Siemens — which also builds trains, industrial robots and medical scanners — fell 4 percent to 20.5 billion euros, slightly below analysts’ expectations.
AERO ENGINES
Rolls-Royce eyes earnings
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC yesterday said that full-year earnings would be at the upper end of a forecast range after job cuts and a management revamp helped the UK aero-engine maker beat first-half estimates. London-based Rolls-Royce expects to post an underlying operating profit of about £450 million (US$590 million) for this year, plus or minus £100 million, it said in a statement. Free cash flow will be about £400 million with the same margin for error, it said.
AUTOMAKERS
BMW profit declines
Net profit at BMW AG fell 6 percent in the second quarter as it spent more on developing new technologies for electric, autonomous and digitally connected vehicles, the company said yesterday. Profit came in at 2.08 billion euros, down from 2.22 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue fell 2.9 percent to 25.02 billion euros. The company said it spent 2.61 billion euros on research and development over the first six months of the year, up 13.6 percent from a year earlier, and has sold 61,000 electric vehicles so far this year, an increase of 42 percent.
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