AUTOMAKERS
Nissan sues Ghosn
Japanese giant Nissan Motor Co yesterday filed a civil lawsuit to reclaim ¥10 billion (US$91 million) from former chairman Carlos Ghosn for what it called “years of his misconduct and fraudulent activity.” Nissan said the damages had been calculated on the basis of the cost to the firm of his “corrupt practices.” It accused him of “the use of overseas residential property without paying rent, private use of corporate jets, payments to his sister, payments to his personal lawyer in Lebanon.”
TECHNOLOGY
Softbank profits fall
Major Japanese technology investor Softbank Group Corp yesterday said its net profit plunged nearly 70 percent for the nine months to December last year as investments in companies such as WeWork Cos and Uber Technologies Inc took a hit. Its bottom-line profit lost 69 percent to ¥476.6 billion for the period as the firm suffered an operating loss of ¥13.0 billion. The company did not publish its outlook for the year to March.
MINING
Vale hit hard last year
Brazilian giant Vale SA on Tuesday said its iron-ore production plunged last year, calling it “the most challenging year of its history” after a dam collapse at one of its mines killed 270 people. Vale, the world’s largest iron ore producer, said its output of the metal fell to 302 million tonnes last year, down 21.5 percent from 2018. The company said in a statement it was hit hard in January last year by the dam collapse at its mine in Brumadinho, southeastern Brazil.
APPAREL
Under Armour shares down
Under Armour Inc’s shares on Tuesday plummeted 16.7 percent after the company said it anticipates a big financial hit from the coronavirus outbreak in China. It also said it might need to book hundreds of millions of US dollars in charges as it restructures its business. The athletic gear maker expects the outbreak to drag its first-quarter sales down by US$50 million to US$60 million. It is also looking at pre-tax charges this year of between US$325 million and US$425 million related to restructuring.
UNITED KINGDOM
Brexit stifles growth
Uncertainty related to Brexit seems to have weighed heavily on the economy during the final quarter of last year as output flatlined. The Office for National Statistics on Tuesday said that increases in the services and construction sectors were offset by another poor showing from manufacturing, particularly the auto industry. As a result, the economy stagnated following upwardly revised 0.5 percent growth in the third quarter. Overall, the economy grew by 1.4 percent last year.
TELECOMS
Court OKs Sprint takeover
T-Mobile US Inc has won court approval for its US$26.5 billion takeover of Sprint Corp, defeating a state-led lawsuit that sought to block the industry-altering wireless deal. The decision by a district judge in Manhattan is a huge win for T-Mobile and its owner, Deutsche Telekom AG, as well as Softbank Group Corp, Sprint’s parent. The combined company, which would operate under the T-Mobile name, would have a regular monthly subscriber base of about 80 million — in the same league as AT&T Inc, which has 75 million subscribers, and Verizon Communications Inc, which has 114 million.
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