APPAREL
Nike shuts stores in China
Nike Inc on Tuesday said that it has closed about half of its stores in China and reduced hours at others due to the worsening outbreak of a new coronavirus, adding that it expects further effects on its operations in the country. “Similar to others in the marketplace, approximately half of Nike-owned stores have been temporarily closed,” while the company is “experiencing lower than planned retail traffic in stores that do remain open,” it said in a statement. “In the short term, we expect the situation to have a material impact on our operations in greater China.”
TECHNOLOGY
Google finds glitch in Photos
Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday said that a software glitch resulted in some Google Photos app smartphone videos being given to the wrong people. Google was notifying those who might have been affected. “We are very sorry this happened,” Google said. “We fixed the underlying issue and have conducted an in-depth analysis to help prevent this from ever happening again.” It was estimated that a small fraction of a percent of those who used a “Takeout” tool might have encountered the glitch, which affected people who used the app to export stored videos from Google Photos between Nov. 21 and Nov. 25 last year.
RETAIL
Best Buy CEO to keep post
Best Buy Co on Tuesday said that chief executive officer Corie Barry would continue to lead the company after its board completed an investigation into allegations against her in an anonymous letter. The company did not disclose what the investigation found, but said that Barry “fully cooperated” with the probe. “I appreciate the board’s support and look forward to continuing to execute on our strategic vision,” Barry said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal last month reported that Barry had an inappropriate romantic relationship with Karl Sanft, a former vice president at Best Buy.
BANKING
BNP Paribas profit up 8.6%
France’s top lender BNP Paribas SA yesterday reported a nearly 9 percent rise in last year’s earnings, beating analysts’ forecasts after a strong final quarter. The bank said net profit for the year rose 8.6 percent to 8.17 billion euros (US$9 billion), ahead of analysts’ forecasts of 7.8 billion euros compiled by FactSet. It said it produced “a good performance in 2019 thanks to our commercial dynamic and restructuring.” For this year, the bank said it expected a “moderate fall” in revenues at its retail bank given persistently low interest rates, but it would aim to offset this by gains in its specialist units such as Arval, its long-term vehicle hire business.
AUTOMAKERS
HK a bigger concern: Ferrari
Ferrari chief executive officer Louis Camilleri on Tuesday said that the Italian luxury sports car maker could shift deliveries to other markets to adjust to any weakness in China due to a coronavirus outbreak there and that he was more concerned about Hong Kong, citing continued softness in the market due to pro-democracy protests. Shipments to Greater China last year increased 20 percent to 836 vehicles. China deliveries in the first half of this year would appear weak by comparison, Camilleri said. Shipments to the Americas shrank 3 percent to 2,900 vehicles, while shipments to the largest market, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, rose 16 percent to 4,895 vehicles.
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
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts