January, 2020

• 5 January

  Nintendo’s flagship store in Tokyo not big enough for its fan base

  

  Bloomberg Just before Christmas last year, a trip to Nintendo Co’s flagship store in Tokyo would have required an hour’s wait just to get in and buy a plush Mario toy or a set of chopsticks bearing Luigi’s face. Opened in November on the sixth floor of the renovated Shibuya Parco shopping mall, the constantly packed 300-square-metre showcase exhibits the ...

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• 5 January

  Most of 2019’s jet accidents occurred in North America

  

  Bloomberg The number of fatal aviation accidents in 2019 rose above the five-year average to 20, with more than half occurring in North America, the Aviation Safety Network said. The 20 crashes killed 283 people, with the bulk of the deaths coming from the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in March, when a Boeing Co 737 Max jet plunged into the ground ...

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• 5 January

  Inspectors skipped ‘checks’ for Ghosn jet

  Bloomberg Inspectors at a Japanese airport didn’t conduct X-ray checks on large cases before they were loaded onto a private jet that’s thought to have carried Carlos Ghosn as the former Nissan Motor Co chief executive officer escaped to Turkey, NHK reported on Sunday. Kansai International Airport inspectors didn’t examine the cases as they were too big to fit into ...

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• 5 January

  Hong Kong retail sales weaken as tourism plunges

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s retail sales posted another double-digit decline in November as visitor arrivals to the financial centre plunged. Retail sales by value retreated 23.6% in the month from a year earlier, extending the run of declines to ten months. The decline in November was slightly better than economists’ expectation and the record contraction in October. By volume, sales contracted ...

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• 5 January

  Amazon mulls offline stores in Germany

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc is considering opening offline retail stores in Germany, newspaper Die Welt reported, citing an interview with Ralf Kleber, head of the company’s operations in the country. Kleber didn’t specify the timing of the plan. Amazon already operates offline stores in the US and the UK, including Amazon Go supermarkets and the Whole Foods Market chain. It has ...

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• 5 January

  Moment of truth for Musk as made-in-China Teslas roll out

  

  Bloomberg Elon Musk’s decision to assemble Tesla Inc cars in China required years of planning and billions of dollars in spending. Now comes the challenging part. The electric Model 3 sedans rolling off the assembly line at Tesla’s Shanghai plant — its first outside the US — face a market where total vehicle sales are expected to fall for a ...

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• 5 January

  Cellnex starts 2020 acquiring towers from Morgan Stanley

  

  Bloomberg Cellnex Telecom SA, the Spanish tower operator that has announced about 7 billion euros ($7.8 billion) of acquisitions since going public in 2015, is making its first deal of the year with the purchase of assets in Portugal. Cellnex, based in Barcelona, will acquire all of the towers held in a joint venture between Altice Europe NV, Morgan Stanley ...

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• 5 January

  Manhattan home sales see smallest drop in two years

  Bloomberg Manhattan home sales slipped 1.2% in the fourth quarter — and that’s the best news for the market in two years. It was the smallest year-over-year decline in deals since buyers started retreating in 2017, according to a report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. While home-shoppers are still wary of overpaying in a ...

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• 5 January

  US court awards HP $439m in damages

  

  Bloomberg HP Inc was awarded $439 million in damages against Quanta Storage Inc and its US subsidiary after a federal judge tripled a jury’s 2019 award for damages caused by a widespread scheme to inflate the price of optical disk drives. In October, a Houston jury ordered Quanta to pay HP $176 million in damages. US District Judge David Hittner ...

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• 5 January

  Samsung to unveil new devices next month

  Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co said it will introduce new products at an event in San Francisco next month. The launch of “new, innovative devices that will shape the next decade of mobile experiences” will take place on February 11 at 11 am local time, the South Korean company said. In a teaser, it showed a rectangle and a square, a ...

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