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Softbank unit invests in Alibaba-backed online education firm Sunday, Mar 09, 2014 08:25 PM PDT HONG KONG (Reuters) - An online education company backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Monday that a unit of Softbank Corp had made a strategic investment in the company for an undisclosed amount. The investment in TutorGroup from SBI Group, formerly known as Softbank Finance Group and one of Asia's biggest venture capital firms, follows a capital raising of nearly $100 million for TutorGroup in February from Alibaba, Singapore state investor Temasek Inc and China's Qiming Venture Partners. ... Full Story | Top |
Tencent to buy 15 pct stake in JD.com in challenge to Alibaba Sunday, Mar 09, 2014 07:11 PM PDT By Paul Carsten BEIJING (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings Ltd will buy a 15 percent stake in e-commerce firm JD.com for $214.7 million, as the two seek to challenge Alibaba Group Holding's dominant position in online shopping in China. Tencent also plans take an additional 5 percent of JD.com on a post-IPO basis, and Tencent President Martin Lau will take a seat on JD.com's board of directors. Although Alibaba is by far China's most dominant e-commerce firm, it has been losing ground to Tencent on mobile as smartphone and tablet usage has surged over recent years. Under the agreement, JD.com will take control of Tencent's own, unsuccessful e-commerce businesses, which will be 100 percent owned by JD.com. Full Story | Top |
Loss of employees on Malaysia flight a blow, U.S. chipmaker says Sunday, Mar 09, 2014 04:12 PM PDT By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Employees of Freescale Semiconductor who were on a Malaysia Airlines flight presumed to have crashed were doing sophisticated work at the U.S. chipmaker, a company spokesman said on Sunday. The 20 Freescale employees, among 239 people on flight MH370, were mostly engineers and other experts working to make the company's chip facilities in Tianjin, China, and Kuala Lumpur more efficient, said Mitch Haws, vice president, global communications and investor relations. "It's definitely a loss for the company." None of Austin, Texas-based Freescale's most senior executives were on board the Boeing Co 777-200ER airliner that vanished from radar screens about an hour after it took off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on Saturday. The employees who were on board, 12 from Malaysia and eight from China, came from a range of disciplines and they were part of a broad push by Chief Executive Officer Gregg Lowe to make Freescale more efficient and cost effective, Haws said. Full Story | Top |
Korea's quirky messaging apps go on offensive in text-happy Indonesia Sunday, Mar 09, 2014 02:11 PM PDT By Miyoung Kim and Andjarsari Paramaditha SEOUL/JAKARTA (Reuters) - South Korea's pioneering mobile messaging apps have taken their oversized emoticons to Indonesia, intent on breaking the dominance of BlackBerry Ltd's BBM messaging service in one of the world's most active social media markets. Kakao Corp has hired pop stars and Naver Corp unit Line Corp has partnered Samsung Electronics Co in a country whose capital Jakarta boasts the most users of Twitter Inc's microblog by city, according to researcher McKinsey & Company. BBM has long been Indonesia's most popular messaging app, with Facebook Inc's $19 billion buyout target WhatsApp in pursuit. Full Story | Top |
IBM factory strike shows shifting China labor landscape Saturday, Mar 08, 2014 10:22 PM PST By John Ruwitch SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A wildcat strike at an IBM factory in southern China illustrates how tectonic shifts under way in the country's labor market are emboldening workers to take matters into their own hands, raising risks for multinationals. More than 1,000 workers walked off the job last week at the factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, after managers on March 3 announced the terms of their transfer to new ownership under Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd. Lenovo agreed in January to pay $2.3 billion for International Business Machine's low-end server business. The strike, which continued into Sunday, fits a growing pattern of industrial activism that has emerged as China's economy has slowed. A worsening labor shortage has shifted the balance of power in labor relations, while smartphones and social media have helped workers organize and made them more aware than ever of the changing environment, experts say. Full Story | Top |
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