CHINA
Inflation accelerating
Consumer prices last month accelerated at their fastest pace in almost eight years as an African swine fever epidemic caused pork prices to more than double, data showed yesterday. The consumer price index — a key gauge of retail inflation — was 4.5 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics said, up from 3.8 percent in October and the highest rate since January 2012. The government’s consumer inflation target for this year is about 3 percent. The producer price index — an important barometer of the industrial sector that measures the cost of goods at the factory gate — showed that prices fell 1.4 percent year-on-year last month.
RETAIL
Ted Baker bosses quit
Ted Baker PLC chairman David Bernstein and interim chief executive officer Lindsay Page have resigned as the British fashion chain ends its most difficult year ever following a scandal over its founder’s workplace behavior. The retailer yesterday suspended its dividend payout as it forecast pretax profit could decline more than 90 percent to as little as £5 million (US$6.6 million) this year. “The last 12 months has undoubtedly been the most challenging in our history,” the company said. Ted Baker last week said that it would appoint outside lawyers and accountants to review an overstatement of unsold goods.
MEDIA
ViacomCBS mulls tower sale
ViacomCBS Inc has hired CBRE Group Inc to review its entire real-estate portfolio, including a possible sale of the CBS skyscraper known as Black Rock in midtown Manhattan. ViacomCBS chief executive officer Bob Bakish announced the plan at the UBS Global telecom and media conference in New York on Monday. He did not indicate an expected price for the Eero Saarinen-designed skyscraper, which opened in 1965 and is 38 stories tall. Viacom and CBS, which completed their merger this month, are looking to generate US$500 million in cost savings. CBS occupies about a third of the building at 51 West 52nd Street.
FOOD DELIVERY
Just Eat rejects new bid
Just Eat PLC has rejected Prosus NV’s higher bid saying that it still significantly undervalues the company. Prosus raised its offer for the British food delivery firm by 4.2 percent to £7.40 per share on Monday. Just Eat advised its shareholders to stick with an all-share combination with Takeaway.com NV in a statement yesterday. Just Eat shares have been trading above the offer price as shareholders hold out for a bigger premium. They closed at £7.81 in London trading on Monday, valuing the company at about £5.3 billion.
BANKING
Paul Volcker dies at 92
Former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, who tackled inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, and later lent his name to landmark Wall Street reforms, died on Sunday. Volcker, who headed the US central bank from 1979 to 1987, was 92. The cause was complications from prostate cancer, his daughter, Janice Zima, said. In a career spanning the post-World War II decades to the 2008-2009 financial crisis — he advised former US presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama — Volcker persuaded lawmakers following the financial meltdown to impose tighter restrictions on the conduct of banks.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last