DEFENSE TECH
BAE benefits from merger
British defense company BAE Systems PLC has snapped up more than US$2 billion in US defense-technology assets that Raytheon Inc. and United Technologies Corp were forced to sell in order to gain antitrust approval for their merger. BAE said it would pay US$1.925 billion in cash for the military global positioning system (GPS) belonging to United subsidiary Collins Aerospace. It is to acquire Raytheon’s airborne tactical radios business for US$275 million in cash. “These assets have come to market as part of the regulatory process relating to the merger,” BAE’s statement said. “It’s rare that two businesses of this quality, with such strong growth prospects and close fit to our portfolio, become available,” BAE chief executive Charles Woodburn said in the statement, adding that they would be folded into the group’s electronics-systems sector.
FRANCE
Strikes hurt economy
The current wave of strikes will hit the economy by 0.1 percentage points over the course of one quarter, Minister of the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire told LCI television yesterday. He also said he hoped to resolve a row with the US over a planned French digital tax by tomorrow night. Le Maire said he would meet his US counterparts at the Davos forum this week. France in July last year decided to apply a 3 percent levy on revenue from digital services earned by firms with revenues of more than 25 million euros (US$27.7 million) nationally and 750 million euros worldwide.
RETAIL
Best Buy CEO under probe
Best Buy Co said it is investigating chief executive officer Corie Barry’s personal conduct, a potential blow to the electronics retailer that comes eight years after a former CEO resigned amid a similar probe. The board received an anonymous letter with the allegations against Barry, the company said in a statement. Best Buy said it hired the law firm Sidley Austin LLP to conduct an independent review and encouraged “the letter’s author to come forward and be part of that confidential process.” Barry said in the statement that the board “has my full cooperation and support as it undertakes this review, and I look forward to its resolution in the near term.”
GREEN ENERGY
Total, Marubeni ink deal
French energy major Total SA and Japan’s Marubeni are to help build a solar park in Qatar, holding stakes of 19.6 percent and 20.4 percent respectively in Siraj 1 SPV, the consortium that won the emirate’s first solar tender. The consortium is to develop and operate the Al Kharsaah Solar PV IPP Project. Siraj Energy, a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and Qatar Electricity & Water Co owns the remaining 60 percent in the project. Marubeni yesterday said that a 25-year power purchase agreement for the photovoltaic farm’s output has been executed with Qatar utility.
TECHNOLOGY
TCL, Tianjin in talks
The Tianjin city government is in early talks to sell stakes in two of its listed technology firms to Chinese consumer electronics giant TCL Corp (TCL集團), people familiar with the matter said. The discussions involved holdings in chip devices maker Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor Co (天津中環半導體) and Tianjin Printronics Circuit Corp (天津普林電路), they said. The city and TCL are still exploring options including direct stake sales or having the TCL acquire control in the major shareholder of the two firms, the people 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