RESTAURANTS
Gen Oyster draws interest
General Oyster Inc, Japan’s largest oyster restaurant operator, has been approached by several Chinese companies interested in buying a stake or perhaps acquiring the business, people familiar with the matter said. Three Chinese firms, including a large Internet company, have expressed interest in separate deals with General Oyster, said the people, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. The Tokyo-based company is considering whether to start talks with the potential partners and might decline to engage, the people said. A spokeswoman for General Oyster declined to comment.
BANKING
Qatar eyes Deutsche Bank
Qatar Investment Authority’s (QIA) chairman suggested that Deutsche Bank AG is among the major German companies the sovereign wealth fund is talking to about potential stake purchases. Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that QIA favors Germany because of its robust economy and is “interested in all the big companies” there. QIA is looking “at different sectors” in Germany, the chairman said. “Financial services is among them,” as are infrastructure and industrials, he said.
RESTAURANTS
Patisserie rescue fails
British entrepreneur Luke Johnson’s efforts to save Patisserie Valerie failed as an accounting scandal pushed the bakery chain’s parent into insolvency, threatening as many as 2,800 jobs on Britain’s beleaguered shopping streets. Patisserie Holdings PLC appointed KPMG as administrators after announcing last week that it had found thousands of false entries in its books. The accounting firm plans to keep 121 of the chain’s approximately 200 stores open as it seeks a possible buyer.
MEDIA
Viacom buying Pluto TV
US media group Viacom Inc on Tuesday announced a deal to buy free streaming television service Pluto TV for US$340 million in cash to better compete as lifestyles shift to online entertainment. Viacom is optimistic about the ad-supported streaming television market, where it plans to work with Pluto TV and a range of partners. Viacom properties include Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as Paramount Pictures.
HEALTHCARE
J&J seeks Auris deal
Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the world’s largest maker of healthcare products, is pursuing an acquisition of Auris Health Inc in a deal that would bring it cutting-edge surgical robotics technology, people with knowledge of the matter said. J&J is seeking to purchase Auris at a premium to the valuation from its latest funding round, the people said. That financing valued the Redwood City, California-based company at about US$2 billion, one person said. Representatives for J&J and Auris declined to comment.
GAMING
Video game sales up 18%
From Fortnite to Pokemon Go, play in the US drove video-game industry revenue to a record US$43.4 billion last year, data released on Tuesday showed. Spending on games in the US rose 18 percent from the previous year, data from the Entertainment Software Association and market tracker NPD Group showed. US spending on video-game hardware, including peripherals, rose to US$7.5 billion last year from US$6.5 billion the previous year, the data showed.
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