MALAYSIA
Regulator probes gas firm
The Securities Commission is investigating oil and gas firm Serba Dinamik Holdings Bhd after the company’s auditors flagged issues last week, the regulator said yesterday. On Friday, Serba Dinamik said that KPMG raised issues over more than 3.5 billion ringgit (US$847.66 million) of contracts and transactions that the auditor had not been able to verify with 11 customers. The company said it saw no issue concerning the legitimacy and existence of the contracts and it did not expect any material impact in the financial year ending on June 30.
ELECTRONICS
Apple to expand stores
Apple Inc is to expand its global retail presence even as stores struggle with an accelerating shift to sales online during the COVID-19 pandemic, Germany’s Funke Mediengruppe reported. The Cupertino, California-based company operates about 500 Apple stores globally, including 100 in Europe. Retail locations offer an opportunity for people to experience new technology, ask questions and attend workshops on Apple’s products, Funke said, citing Deirdre O’Brien, the iPhone maker’s senior vice president of retail and people.
INSURANCE
Generali offers to buy rival
Assicurazioni Generali SpA offered to buy Italian rival Societa Cattolica di Assicurazioni SC in a deal valuing the smaller firm at 1.5 billion euros (US$1.83 billion). Generali, which already has a stake of almost 20 percent in the company, is offering investors 6.75 euros per Cattolica share in an all cash deal, the insurer said in a statement yesterday. The offer represents a 15 percent premium on the most recent closing price, it said. “The acquisition would allow Generali to become the first in the non-life insurance market and to strengthen its presence in the life market,” the insurer said in the statement.
REAL ESTATE
Start-up to buy REA entities
Singapore real-estate start-up PropertyGuru Pte has agreed to acquire all of the shares in REA Group Ltd’s operating entities in Malaysia and Thailand, whose sites include iProperty.com.my and thinkofliving.com. As part of the agreement, Australia’s REA Group, which is majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire, would receive an 18 percent equity interest in PropertyGuru and appoint a director to its board, the Southeast Asian company said in a statement yesterday. No price has been disclosed for the deal.
FOOD
Charoen shuts factory
Charoen Pokphand Foods Pcl, Thailand’s biggest meat producer, closed its factory in Saraburi province for five days to stem a COVID-19 outbreak, the provincial government said. The poultry processing plant, about 100km north of Bangkok, would be closed from Sunday to Thursday, the provincial administration said on its Facebook page late on Saturday. The closure came after the authorities found 245 employees had been infected with the virus.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota aids in vaccinations
Toyota Motor Corp’s famed just-in-time production system is being used to speed up COVID-19 vaccinations at its hometown, public broadcaster NHK reported. In Toyota city, the firm brought its manufacturing knowhow to vaccinations that began on Sunday, NHK said. One location on a Toyota factory site used signs, routes and color-coding to maximize the throughput of patients, it 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],”
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
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