AUTOMAKERS
Tesla cuts China prices
Electric vehicle giant Tesla Inc has cut starter prices for its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles by as much as 9 percent in China, listings on the company’s Chinese Web site showed yesterday. The starting price for the Model 3 sedan was reduced to 265,900 yuan (US$36,727) from 279,900 yuan, while that for Model Y sport utility vehicle was cut to 288,900 yuan from 316,900 yuan, the Web site showed. Tesla has been adjusting the prices in line with costs, the company told Reuters in a statement. Capacity utilization at its Shanghai Gigafactory has improved, while the supply chain remains stable, leading to lower costs, it said. The price cut is the first by Tesla in China this year, after it raised the prices for the two models earlier in the year due to rising raw material costs.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Sumitovant to buy Myovant
A fully owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Pharma Co agreed to buy the rest of drugmaker Myovant Sciences Ltd for US$1.7 billion after raising its offer, as it seeks to bolster the development of medicines for women’s health and prostate cancer. Sumitovant Biopharma Ltd, which already owns 52 percent of Myovant, offered US$27 a share cash for the rest of Myovant — 10 percent more than the drugmaker’s closing on Friday, Osaka-based Sumitomo Pharma said in a statement yesterday. The acquisition represents an enterprise value of US$2.9 billion for Myovant, it said. The transaction is scheduled to close in the first quarter of next year, subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals, Sumitomo Pharma said.
AVIATION
Riyadh, Airbus in talks
Saudi Arabia is in advanced negotiations to order almost 40 A350 jets from Europe’s Airbus SE as part of strategic efforts to launch a new airline and challenge heavyweight carriers in the Persian Gulf, industry sources said. If confirmed, the purchase by the sovereign Public Investment Fund, worth US$12 billion at list prices, could be announced as early as this week when Riyadh hosts a major forum, the Future Investment Initiative, the sources said. It remained unclear whether Boeing Co would also seize part of a substantial shopping list for the new airline, which would be named RIA, the sources said. One source familiar with the negotiations said that it was “not over yet.” The fund has been negotiating to buy about 75 jets and another source said the kingdom was leaning toward the Boeing 787.
SHIPPING
MSC to buy Italian firm
Shipping giant Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) is to buy Italy’s Rimorchiatori Mediterranei SpA, an e-mailed statement said on Sunday. Deal terms were not disclosed. Through its unit SAS Shipping Agencies Services Sarl, MSC agreed to acquire 100 percent of Rimorchiatori Mediterranei — an international towage operator active in Italy, Malta, Singapore, Malaysia, Norway, Greece and Colombia — from Rimorchiatori Riuniti and a fund managed by DWS’ Infrastructure Investment business, it said in the statement. MSC, the shipping company founded by Gianluigi Aponte, has been recently active in the Italian transport market, where in partnership with Deutsche Lufthansa AG it missed out in the bidding for Alitalia successor ITA Airways as Italy’s government instead selected an investor group led by US fund Certares Management LLC.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
AUSPICIOUS TIMING: Ostensibly looking to spike the guns of domestic rivals, ByteDance launched the upgrade to coincide with the Lunar New Year China’s ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動) has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country’s most widely used artificial-intelligence (AI) app, the company announced on Saturday. ByteDance is one of several Chinese firms hoping to generate overseas and domestic buzz around its new AI models during the Lunar New Year holiday, which began yesterday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese partake in family gatherings in their hometowns. The company, like rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), was caught off-guard by DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise to global fame during last year’s Spring Festival, when Silicon Valley and investors worldwide were
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