PHARMACEUTICALS
Sanofi to sell stake
France’s Sanofi SA on Monday said that it plans to divest its stake in US biotech firm Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc that is valued at about US$13 billion. However, Sanofi, which holds about a 20.6 percent stake in Regeneron, said that it had no intention of halting its partnership with the firm. The sale would see a repurchase by Regeneron of about US$5 billion of its shares from Sanofi, the French company said in a statement. Sanofi chief executive officer Paul Hudson said that the proceeds from the transaction would be used to further expand the company.
GERMANY
Confidence recovers
Consumer confidence recovered some of the ground lost due the COVID-19 pandemic, but it remains deep in negative territory as Europe’s top economy faces a slow recovery, a survey showed yesterday. GfK said its forward-looking monthly barometer for next month showed a reading of minus-18.9 points, up from minus-23.1 this month, when the indicator plunged 25 points. Despite the improvement, next month’s level is the second-lowest ever measured by the survey since its creation in 1980, GfK said.
SWEDEN
Economy to shrink 7%
The economy is on track to shrink 7 percent this year, in line with the government’s forecast in its spring budget, Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson said yesterday. “Our best forecast today is negative GDP growth of 7 percent this year,” Andersson told reporters. The government gave two scenarios in its budget, one of a milder contraction in GDP of about 4 percent and a more negative outcome of a 10 percent dip. Indicators put Sweden somewhere in the middle of the two, Andersson said.
VIETNAM
Ministry proposes tax cuts
The Ministry of Finance is proposing a 30 percent corporate tax cut this year for businesses with annual revenue of less than 50 billion dong (US$2.2 million) and fewer than 100 employees to help them recover from the pandemic. The proposed tax cuts are estimated to cost 15.84 trillion dong, the ministry said. Small companies represent more than 93 percent of the 760,000 businesses in the nation, it added.
BANKING
HSBC to buy German stake
HSBC Holdings PLC is to take full control of its German business as Europe’s largest lender restructures its global operations. The bank is to acquire an 18.66 percent stake in HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG from Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, a regional lender in the south of Germany, according to statements by the banks on Monday. They did not disclose a price. HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt had total assets of 26.6 billion euros (US$29.2 billion) and employed more than 3,000 people at the end of last year.
RIDE-HAILING
Uber to cut 600 Indian jobs
Uber Technologies Inc is to cut about 600 jobs in India as part of its plans to trim 23 percent of its global workforce, as the company navigates a lockdown that has brought businesses in the nation to a grinding halt. Uber last week said that it would focus on its core businesses of ride-hailing and food delivery, and cut staffing by more than one-third globally in an attempt to become profitable, despite the pandemic.
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