RETAILERS
M&S posts 88% decline
British retailer Marks & Spencer Group PLC (M&S) yesterday reported an 88 percent slump in full-year profit, reflecting a collapse in clothing sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and told investors that they should not expect a dividend this year. M&S, which also sells upmarket food, made a pretax profit before one-off items of ￡50.3 million (US$71.26 million) in the year to April 3, down from the ￡403.1 million made in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. The 137-year-old group said that like-for-like clothing and homeware sales plummeted 31.5 percent, damaged by multiple COVID-19 lockdowns, which shuttered stores. On a statutory basis, M&S sank to a pretax loss of ￡209.4 million, versus a profit of ￡67.2 million in the 2019-2020 fiscal year.
CHINA
Goldman gets go-ahead
Goldman Sachs Group Inc on Tuesday said that it had won preliminary approval from Chinese regulators for a wealth management joint venture to serve customers in China. The venture, owned 51 percent by Goldman’s asset management division and 49 percent by a subsidiary of the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (中國工商銀行), aims to serve some of the estimated US$70 trillion in investible assets expected at Chinese households by 2030, Goldman said in a news release.
AIRLINES
Norwegian exits bankruptcy
Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA yesterday emerged from six months of bankruptcy protection with a smaller fleet and its debt almost wiped out, the budget carrier said, but also facing stronger competition and a lingering uncertainty wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The budget airline has raised 6 billion kroner (US$720.77 million) in fresh capital, more than enough to meet the minimum requirement set by bankruptcy courts in Dublin and Oslo. The company has 51 aircraft, down from a pre-pandemic 156 aircraft, while its debt amounts to between 16 billion kroner and 18 billion kroner, down from more than 80 billion kroner, the airline said.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Carlyle to buy Vectura
Carlyle Group Inc agreed to buy Vectura Group PLC for about ￡958 million in cash to boost the UK drugmaker’s transformation. The private equity firm offered ￡1.36 in cash as well as a ￡0.19 cash dividend for each Vectura share held, the companies said in a statement. The offer represents a 27 percent premium to Vectura’s closing price on Tuesday. Carlyle aims to speed Vectura’s expansion as the company transforms itself into a maker of inhaled therapies for other manufacturers in the industry. Vectura is working on a COVID-19 medicine, among others.
UNITED STATES
West coast eyes wind farms
The government is set to open California’s coastline to offshore wind farms, officials said on Tuesday, adding to the approval of the nation’s biggest wind project to date off Massachusetts. The government’s opening up of California waters came after a resolution to longstanding opposition from the Pentagon, which uses the ocean waters for military exercises and had put swaths of coast off limits to the industry, officials said. This gives the green light to the “first commercial scale offshore clean energy projects” on the west coast, the White House said in a statement.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS