AUTOMAKERS
Nissan mulls electric pickup
Nissan Motor Co is looking to breathe new life into its full-size gasoline-powered pickup by electrifying it with the help of a Detroit-based start-up, people familiar with the matter said. The Japanese automaker is considering buying a battery-electric powertrain from Hercules Electric Vehicles for its Titan pickup and sharing parts for the start-up’s own truck in a prospective strategic partnership, said the people, who declined to be named. The talks are ongoing and could still fall apart before a deal is signed, they said. The two planned vehicles would join a crowded field of new electric trucks chasing an as-yet untested market for battery-powered haulers. Hercules plans to produce its first vehicle, a luxury electric truck called the Hercules Alpha, at niche volumes starting in mid-2022.
CHINA
US firms more optimistic
More than 60 percent of US businesses in the nation are more optimistic about doing business after the US presidential election, a survey released yesterday showed. However, nearly one-third of firms believed that trade tensions would continue indefinitely, according to the survey of 124 companies by the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, which also found that 33 percent of company heads were concerned about the personal safety of employees as a result of exit bans or detentions. Most respondents to the survey, which was conducted from Nov. 11 to Sunday, did not expect trade restrictions or tariffs to increase. Companies also showed increased optimism on expected revenues this year compared with a July survey.
UNITED KINGDOM
Borrowing hits record
Government borrowing climbed to a record £214.9 billion (US$285.4 billion) in the first seven months of the fiscal year, underscoring the tough choices facing Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak as he prepares for a major announcement on spending next week. Office for National Statistics data yesterday showed that the deficit in October alone totaled £22.3 billion, leaving the nation on course for a shortfall approaching £400 billion for this fiscal year as a whole and debt above 100 percent of GDP for the first time since the early 1960s. There was better news on retail sales, which rose for a sixth consecutive month. At almost one-fifth of the economy, the deficit is set to be the largest in peacetime — a staggering deterioration from March, when the Office for Budget Responsibility was expecting just £55 billion, or about 2.5 percent of GDP.
GAMING
Roblox files for IPO
Online gaming company Roblox Corp has filed for an initial public offering (IPO), aiming to capitalize on a pandemic-fueled sales surge and the growing popularity of its platform. The size of the offering was listed at US$1 billion in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday, although that is a placeholder that is likely to change. The company is to disclose plans for the size and price range for the sale in a later filing. Roblox hosts millions of games that are built by its users, who then get a share of any related revenue. It says that two-thirds of all children aged nine to 12 in the US use the platform. The company had 31 million daily active users during the first nine months of the year, up 82 percent from the same period last year, the filing said. The amount of time those users spent engaged on the platform more than doubled from last year to 22 billion hours, the company 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