BANKING
Credit Suisse suffers loss
Credit Suisse Group AG’s trading business might have evaded some of the issues that hurt earnings at its Wall Street peers, but there was no such escape for the advisory unit. The Zurich-based firm’s Investment Banking and Capital Markets business posted a wider-than-expected first-quarter pretax loss of US$91 million, exceeding estimates of a loss of about US$10 million. Net revenue dropped by more than a third, with the bank blaming the decline on a slump in activity. The business, which focuses on services including mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity offerings, and derivative transactions, saw large declines in both advisory and underwriting fees. Earnings from equity underwriting plummeted by almost half after offerings slowed due to the US government shutdown last year. Debt underwriting earnings declined by more than a third because of lower leveraged-finance activity.
PROPERTY
AT&T to sell office space
AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia has agreed to sell space in a Manhattan tower for US$2.2 billion to real estate giant Related Cos, helping the telecom repay some debt. WarnerMedia is to lease back the offices — located in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood — until early 2034, AT&T said on Tuesday. The transaction is expected to close late in the second quarter. AT&T is on a crusade to reduce debt since last year’s acquisition of Time Warner Inc for US$85 billion. The company had a US$176.5 billion debt burden in its most recently reported quarter. The space in Tuesday’s agreement is in 30 Hudson Yards, the third-tallest building in New York. Related is building the US$25 billion Hudson Yards project with Oxford Properties Group Inc, betting that the neighborhood can become a new nexus of shopping, offices and apartment buildings. Time Warner previously sold its headquarters at Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle for US$1.3 billion to a group led by Related.
AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai profit surges
Hyundai Motor Co has increased its operating profit for the first time in six quarters, helped by strong demand for new sport utility vehicles (SUV) such as the Palisade and decreasing incentive spending in the US. First-quarter operating profit climbed to 824.9 billion won (US$718 million), compared with the average analyst estimate of 777.3 billion won. After defeating activist Elliott Management Corp in a proxy fight last month, Hyundai chairman-in-waiting Euisun Chung is trying to convince investors that his planned push into new models, including electric vehicles, would translate into long-term earnings growth. The large Palisade SUV has met strong demand in South Korea and is to go on sale in the US in the third quarter, taking on Ford Motor Co’s Explorer and Toyota Motor Corp’s Highlander.
ENERGY
EPH buys two power plants
Czech Republic-based coal mining and energy group EPH, known for bucking Europe’s green trend, on Tuesday said that it would buy two power plants in Northern Ireland. The plants, a gas-fired facility in Ballylumford and a coal-fired one in Kilroot, have a total installed output of 1.4 gigawatts and are currently owned by US-based AES Corp. “The acquisition includes a combined cycle gas turbine, a battery storage facility, open cycle turbines and a coal-fired power station,” EPH said. “The transaction is subject to EU merger clearance and is expected to close during the summer of 2019,” it said, without disclosing the price.
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