CREDIT CARDS
Apple, Goldman team up
Apple Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc are to begin testing a jointly developed credit card with employees in the next few weeks, people with knowledge of the matter said. A wider rollout to consumers is to come later this year, the people said. The card would pair with new iPhone software features that would help users manage their finances, said the Wall Street Journal, which reported the plans earlier on Thursday. Apple and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
TELECOMS
Italy MPs want Huawei ban
A group of lawmakers from Italy’s ruling coalition is pushing the government to ban China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) from supplying equipment for the country’s rollout of 5G mobile communications, Il Messaggero newspaper said yesterday. Lawmakers from the Lega party, which governs alongside the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, plan to call in parliament for Rome to use its “golden powers” of industrial veto to block Huawei, already a supplier to major telecom operators in Italy.
MACROECONOMICS
Malaysia slips into deflation
The economy swung into deflation last month for the first time since the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009 as fuel prices dropped. Consumer prices declined 0.7 percent from a year ago after hovering below 1 percent in the previous seven months, according to the statistics department’s report released yesterday. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 21 economists was for a contraction of 0.4 percent. The last time the nation hit deflation was in June to November 2009. The economy contracted 1.5 percent that year.
HOUSING
US home sales drop
Sales of existing homes in the US dropped last month for the third consecutive month, hitting their lowest level in more than three years, figures from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) showed. Prices rose at their slowest pace in almost seven years while inventories moved higher, the NAR said. Total sales of single-family homes and apartments dipped 1.2 percent to an annual rate of 4.94 million, the lowest level since November 2015, the industry group said.
INTERNET
Baidu profit halved in Q4
Chinese Internet search provider Baidu Inc (百度) said late on Thursday that its profit came in at 2.08 billion yuan (US$303 million) in the final quarter of last year, a 50 percent plunge from a year earlier, but revenues for the quarter were a better-than-expected 27.2 billion yuan due to growth in its core search business and a push into artificial intelligence. Earnings were hit by losses stemming from non-controlling interests in Baidu’s video unit iQiyi (愛奇藝) and continued investments into new fields, the company said.
FOOD
Kraft writes down US$15.4bn
US packaged food giant Kraft Heinz Co on Thursday announced a US$15.4 billion write-down on some of its most iconic brands, reflecting a big change in what people like to eat. In its fourth-quarter earnings report, the company said that the write-down resulted in a net loss of US$12.6 billion. The write-down cut the balance sheet value of US and Canadian operations and the famed Kraft and Oscar Mayer trademarks, it 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],”
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