AUTOMAKERS
BMW unveils China plan
BMW yesterday said that it plans to build fully electric models of its Mini at a new plant in China, as it began a joint venture with Chinese partner Great Wall Motor Co (長城汽車). About 160,000 vehicles a year are set to roll off the assembly line at the planned factory in Zhangjiagang, which would eventually employ 3,000 people, it said. Construction of the plant is scheduled to begin next year and last until 2022, the company said in a statement. The partners are investing US$715 million in the project, it said.
AIRLINES
Insurer snubs SAA
International travel agency Flight Centre Travel Group has stopped selling tickets for South African Airways (SAA) flights after a travel insurance firm said that it would no longer cover them against insolvency. State-owned SAA failed to pay its employees their full salaries this month and has said it has almost no cash left after a week-long strike. Flight Centre said in a letter to clients on Thursday that its preferred travel insurance provider and its underwriters were no longer willing to cover SAA under their Travel Supplier Insolvency benefit “due to doubts concerning the long-term viability of the airline.”
APPAREL
Vinted attains unicorn status
Vinted, an online marketplace for second-hand clothes, has surfed a sustainable fashion wave to become Lithuania’s first technology start-up to reach “unicorn” status with a valuation of more than US$1 billion. The company, created in 2008 when one founder wanted to give away surplus clothes after moving to a new house, is growing rapidly, with 1.3 billion euros (US$1.4 billion) of reused clothing changing hands on its platform this year. Vinted on Thursday said that its latest funding round had raised 128 million euros, valuing the company at more than 1 billion euros. US-based venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with participation from existing backers such as Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Accel and Burda Principal Investments.
GERMANY
Unemployment rate falls
Unemployment unexpectedly fell this month as a slump in manufacturing showed signs of stabilizing and trade tensions that have weighed on exporters eased. In a report that was likely to damp any expectation of fiscal stimulus, the number of people out of work slid by 16,000, compared with estimates for an increase of 6,000. The unemployment rate held at 5 percent, near a record low. Data this month have shown a rebound in factory orders and a small improvement in business confidence. That has given credence to an insistence by the government that there is no immediate case to deviate from its balanced budget, a stance backed by Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Firms cut prices in China
Firms including AstraZeneca PLC and Roche Holding AG have agreed to cut the prices of some of their newest innovative drugs in China by an average of 61 percent as they aim to gain access to the world’s second-biggest market. The drugs that made it onto the list included AstraZeneca’s Roxadustat, an anemia medicine, and Roche’s lung cancer treatment Alecensa. Other Western medications added were hepatitis C treatments from Gilead Sciences Inc and Merck & Co, and AbbVie Inc’s Humira injection pen for rheumatoid arthritis. There are more than 2,700 medicines on the list after the lastest adjustments.
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