19/08/2025

BIZ & FINANCE TUESDAY | AUG 19, 2025

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SHANGHAI: Swiss watchmaker Swatch has issued an apology and pulled ads featuring images of an Asian male model pulling the corners of his eyes up and backwards in a “slanted eye” pose. The images for the Swatch Essentials collection were widely condemned online in China, where many comments said they appeared to mimic racist taunts about Asian eyes. In an apology posted in both Chinese and English on its official account on the Weibo social media platform on Saturday, Swatch said that it has “taken note of the recent concerns” and removed all related materials worldwide. “We sincerely apologise for any distress or misunderstanding this may have caused,” the statement said. It also posted the same apology on Instagram. Swatch, which also makes Omega, Longines and Tissot watches, is heavily exposed to China for revenue, with around 27% of the group’s sales last year coming from the China, Hong Kong and Macau region. Revenue for the watchmaker last year slumped 14.6% to 6.74 billion Swiss francs (RM23 billion) in 2024, hit by a downturn in demand in China, where Swatch said it was seeing “persistently difficult market conditions and weak demand for consumer goods overall”. – Reuters Swatch apologises for ‘slanted eye’ ad

People walking past a Swatch store in Beijing yesterday. – REUTERSPIC

Games industry in search of new winning combo

Klook said to have hired banks for US IPO NEW YORK: Klook, a travel booking services company, has hired investment banks to help arrange a potential initial public offering in the US, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The Hong Kong-based company, backed by investors including SoftBank Group and Goldman Sachs Group, is working with bankers at Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan on the planned first-time share sale, said the people, asking not to be identified as the process is private. The deal could come as early as this year and raise around US$500 million (RM1.37 billion), they said, cautioning that the timing and deal size are subject to market conditions. US IPO activity has gained momentum, bolstered by strong tech earnings and signs of progress in trade negotiations that have restored investor confidence. Recent listings, including cryptocurrency exchange operator Bullish, and design software company Figma, underscore the uptick in market debuts, reversing a period in the year when uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariff policies weighed on new offerings. It was not immediately clear whether Klook will be selling a stake in the IPO, or whether it will be an investor sell-down or a combination of both. Klook provides various booking services to travellers across a range of locations globally and competes with other global travel booking sites such as Booking.com and TripAdvisor, as well as China’s Trip.com and South Korea’s Yanolja. – Reuters the Bank of England – its fifth since August 2024 – was unlikely to push down mortgage costs much further but could encourage buyers. Two-year fixed-rate mortgage rates have fallen to 4.49% from 5.17% a year ago. Last week, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said Britain’s housing market recovery lost steam at the fastest pace in a year in July and some buyers were worried about possible tax increases in Finance Minister Rachel Reeves’ next budget. – Reuters

on competing console makers’ hardware. “They’ve had really great success on the PlayStation platform. Sony is making a bunch of money on that too,” Piscatella said “It’s a little bit of a win-win all the way around.” Some PlayStation games are making the trip in the opposite direction, with Helldivers 2 the first to be made available on Xbox as well as the traditional PC port. Shoring up sales is vital in an era where the cost of developing high-spec “AAA” games has mounted into the hundreds of millions of dollars – exposing studios to massive risk should their games not perform as hoped. But several breakout hits have recently shown that lower-budget games can still win over players with gameplay, story and art style, such as four-million-selling French turn-based battler Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 . “There’s a realisation you don’t need to spend masses of money to deliver a high-quality game that can appeal broadly and so everyone is rushing towards that model,” said Christopher Dring, founder of industry website The Game Business. But “for every Clair Obscur success story, there are 10 games that fail to find an audience at all”, Piscatella pointed out. “It’s hyper-competitive for those products outside of that big sphere.” – AFP

The mood is mixed for the 1,500 exhibitors attending this year, as major publishers have recently steered back into profitability but the job cuts seen over the past two years continue. In early July, Microsoft said it would lay off around 9,000 people, with hundreds leaving game studios like Candy Crush developer King and several games cancelled, including Everwild . “The industry is consolidating quite a bit” after the bumper years when Covid-19 lockdowns created a captive audience, said Rhys Elliott of specialist games data firm Alinea Analytics. Around 30,000 workers have lost their jobs since early 2023, according to tracking site Games Industry Layoffs – more than 4,000 of them so far this year. Revenue in the global games market should hold steady at just under US$190 billion this year, data firm Newzoo has forecast. The number of players and hours spent with the medium are stable while an ever-expanding number of titles are jostling for attention. And with leviathans like Roblox or Fortnite swallowing the attention of hundreds of millions of monthly users, “everyone’s fighting for a smaller share of that pie”, said Circana expert Mat Piscatella. The need to find new audiences has pushed Xbox, the biggest games publisher in the world, to switch strategy, increasingly offering its titles

o Major publishers return to profitability but job cuts continue

PARIS: The global games industry gathers for the vast Gamescom trade fair in Cologne this week, with hopes that upcoming heavy-hitters like GTA VI can help the industry escape its doldrums. Today’s opening night event will show off major releases slated for the months ahead, with the starring role going to Black Ops 7 – the new instalment in the sprawling Call of Duty saga. Trade visitors will have tomorrow to peruse the stands and make connections, before tens of thousands of enthusiastic gamers are unleashed on the vast salon from Thursday to Sunday. Last year’s Gamescom drew almost 335,000 people to the Cologne exhibition centre, where studios lay on vast stands with consoles or PCs offering hands-on play with the latest releases. Nintendo is back in 2025 after staying away last year, surfing on record launch sales for its Switch 2 console. And Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division will show off new portable hardware expected to be released towards the end of the year.

Asking prices for UK homes drop but July sales hit five-year high LONDON: Asking prices for newly advertised British houses and apartments fell in the four weeks to mid-August but the drop was less notable than in the previous two months and sales in July were their highest for the time of year since 2020, a survey showed. Asking prices had shown unusually big declines for the time of year in the previous two four-week periods. In annual terms, prices were up by 0.3%, Rightmove said. the Covid-19 pandemic and government tax breaks. However, the number of available homes for sale again grew by more than the increase in sales during July, keeping the volume of homes for sale at a decade high.

Colleen Babcock, Rightmove’s property expert, said sellers were competing more on price. The number of sales agreed in July was the highest for the month since 2020 when demand for bigger homes was unleashed by

A third of homes on sale were cut in price while on the market, the second-highest proportion for the time of year in data going back to 2012. Babcock said this month’s interest rate cut by

Property website Rightmove said yesterday prices for homes put on sale between July 13 and Aug 9 dropped by 1.3% from the previous four weeks, in line with the normal mid-summer fall in prices.