RETAIL
Protests hit Best Mart sales
Snacks chain Best Mart 360 Holdings Ltd (優品360) has seen revenue drop by double digits as its stores came under attack by pro-democracy protests that have gripped Hong Kong. More than 70 of its 102 stores have been vandalized in more than 180 instances, chairman Lin Tsz-fung (林子峰) said in an interview on Monday with Bloomberg TV. The company has been targeted because some protesters believe Lin has ties to pro-Beijing gangs from Fujian Province, which he denies.
BONDS
Japan mulls 50-year bonds
Japanese policymakers are considering a 50-year government bond issue as a long-term means of putting a floor under super-long interest rates, sources said. Selling such bonds would allow the government to lock in cheap long-term funding and give yield-starved investors higher returns. It could also offer the Bank of Japan a new tool for its “yield-curve control” policy by helping prevent excessive declines in super-long bond yields. There are no immediate plans to issue such bonds in Japan, a Ministry of Finance official said.
AVIATION
EasyJet adds A320neos
British budget carrier EasyJet PLC is to buy 12 more A320neos it previously had options to purchase, Airbus SE said yesterday, the third day of the biennial Dubai Airshow. That would push EasyJet’s total order for the single-aisle plane to 159, Airbus said. The list price of the A320neo was US$110.6 million last year, making the order for 12 worth about US$1.3 billion, but airlines typically negotiate better prices.
BANKING
Julius Baer unveils buyback
Julius Baer Group Ltd announced its first share buyback in eight years even as inflows slowed as clients pulled money from a struggling Italian subsidiary. The Swiss private bank presented investors with a mixed bag for the first 10 months of the year, announcing a 400 million Swiss franc (US$404 million) buyback, while also saying it would book a writedown on Italy-based wealth manager Kairos. Outflows at Kairos would lead to a charge of 90 million euros (US$100 million), the bank said.
VIETNAM
Central bank cuts rates
Effective yesterday, the State Bank of Vietnam cut its interest-rate cap for dong deposits and ordered lenders to lower interest rates to support key business sectors. The limit on interest rates was cut to 5 percent from 5.5 percent for dong deposits with maturities of one month to less than six months, the central bank said in a statement on Monday. The regulator also ordered banks to lower the maximum dong lending rate for short-term loans to 6 percent from 6.5 percent, the statement said.
BATTERIES
Tesla to boost capacity
The world’s biggest lithium-ion battery is about to get even bigger, with Tesla Inc set to beef up capacity at the Hornsdale site in South Australia. The system is to be expanded by 50 percent to 150 megawatts, according to an announcement from Neoen SA, the French company that operates the site. The storage site has already saved consumers more than A$50 million (US$34 million) in its first year of operation. Neoen has also outlined plans to build a giant renewables complex in South Australia.
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