March, 2017

• 1 March

  Toshiba to seek bids for its chip unit at $13 billion value

  

    Bloomberg Toshiba Corp. is sending letters soliciting offers for its memory chip business this week and seeking bids that value it at about 1.5 trillion yen ($13 billion), according to people familiar with the matter. The Japanese conglomerate is offering a majority stake in the chip unit and would be willing to sell the entire business, said the people, ...

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• 1 March

  China’s factory gauge strengthens as producer prices rebound

  

    Bloomberg China’s official factory gauge firmed in February as producer prices rebounded, giving top officials gathering in Beijing a solid economic backdrop as they seek to rein in financial risk. Manufacturing purchasing managers index climbed to 51.6 in February, compared with a median estimate of 51.2 in a Bloomberg survey of economists and 51.3 in January. Non-manufacturing PMI stood ...

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• 1 March

  India GDP to slow less than estimated as cash returns to economy

    Bloomberg India’s economy is forecast to slow less than estimated as banks work to replace cash sucked out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s shock clampdown in November. Gross domestic product will probably grow 7.1 percent in the year through March after a 7.9 percent expansion the previous year, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement in New Delhi. While ...

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• 1 March

  A new play looms for Japan stocks scene

  

    Bloomberg After years of disappointment, a quiet revolution may be underway in the Japanese stock market. Japan’s companies have for years sat on record piles of cash — the equivalent of $2.4 trillion in September, the most in the world. The issue has been deploying those funds for shareholder benefit. A key part of Abenomics has been sharpening the ...

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• 1 March

  Can Korea’s chaebol change? Ask confucius

  

    Back in 2006, after Chung Mong-koo, chairman of Hyundai Motor Co. Ltd. and son of its founder, was arrested amid one of South Korea’s recurring corruption scandals, I called a friend in the company’s public relations office. He answered in a breathless panic. Without Chung in the driver’s seat, he assured me, the management of Korea’s largest automaker would ...

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• 1 March

  Demand to occupy London offices persist

  

    London’s Cheesegrater building is as close as Britain gets to a memorial to Brexit. Construction of the wedge-shaped skyscraper in the heart of the city’s financial district started in 2011 as things were picking up after the financial crisis. Within three weeks of the European Union referendum, the tower was fully let. At the time, its co-owner, British Land ...

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• 1 March

  Will mobile users ditch smartphone for Nokia 3310?

  

    The comeback of the Nokia 3310, the icon of the “dumb phone” industry, is mainly a marketing gimmick by a Finnish startup. But there’s plenty of reasons to embrace it as something more — as an antidote to these digitally toxic times. Unlike the original, which was discontinued more than a decade ago, the rebooted model by HMD offers ...

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• 1 March

  Cashing in on ‘propaganda posters’

  

    Hanoi / DPA Pham Thi Minh Thinh, a 52-year-old Hanoi native, spent her early childhood amidst the backdrop of catastrophic American bombings against her home city. Born in 1965 at the onset of the US-Vietnam War, she clearly remembers hiding in underground shelters as explosions rocked the surface. “It was a very painful time because the bombs nearly killed ...

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• 1 March

  ‘Even God is not ending my life’

  

    KABUL / AP Raheem Rejaey was a drug addict for 17 years. He lived under bridges in Kabul or in the ruins of buildings. His clothes reeked. In his misery, he tried suicide several times, he said, once intentionally overdosing and lying unconscious in a street for two days, undiscovered. So he can feel the pain of other addicts ...

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• 1 March

  Russia dominating Europe gas scene for two decades

  

    Bloomberg Europe has wanted to wean itself from Russian natural gas ever since supplies from its eastern neighbor dropped during freezing weather in 2009. Almost a decade later, the region has never been more dependent. Gazprom PJSC, Russia’s state-run export monopoly, shipped a record amount of gas to the European Union last year and accounts for about 34 percent ...

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