10/08/2017 Asia Business Report

Now on BBC News all the latest business news live from Singapore.

A deadline looms for Toshiba to report its annual results. It has

until today to get an to sign it off. Silicon Valley setting an

example when it comes to paid maternity leave in America but will

the rest of the country Good morning, Asia, hello, world.

It's Thursday and glad you could join us for this edition of Asia

Business Report, I'm Rico Hizon and we begin with Japan's troubled

electronics giant Toshiba and today is the deadline for the company to

report its audited results for the past fiscal year. Toshiba has missed

the deadline several times and some investors are now questioning its

very survival. For the latest let's go over to Mariko Oi, our business

editor, a lot of confusion about these Toshiba results, they can't

seem to reconcile where they are at. Indeed. The delay has been caused

because of the disagreement between the auditor and Toshiba, but it

looks like at least the auditor is giving a partial approval so that

the company can report its results later today. Let's remind you of how

we actually got here, because it actually all started over a decade

ago when Toshiba bought US nuclear company Westinghouse. We didn't hear

much about it until of course in March 2011 the massive tsunami

struck a nuclear power plant in Fukushima causing a huge disaster

and that made it obviously a lot harder for companies to sell nuclear

energy. Then again we didn't really hear from them until two years ago

when we found out Toshiba has been inflating profits over the last

seven years. Just as the company was starting to recover from that

accounting scandal in December last year, we heard Westinghouse, the US

nuclear company, has been losing quite a lot of money. We didn't know

how much but the number kept ballooning and that's basically why

the company hasn't been able to report its results. It started

trying to sell the chips business, which is the only profitable unit,

but it's facing legal challenges from its US partner. Because of that

we saw the company's chairman resign and then Westinghouse filing for

bankruptcy as well. Earlier this month we saw shares in Toshiba being

demoted to the second section of the Tokyo stock exchange and if Toshiba

couldn't file results by today then there were fears it could even get

delisted, but at least that the Earth seems to be waning. Hopefully

the drama ends today, we will have to wait and see. -- that the. In

Japan one of the biggest companies that makes liquid-crystal displays

for television screens is slashing 30% of its workforce. Japan Display

said it will cut 3700 jobs as part of restructuring. It also expects to

make a loss of $1.5 billion in the current financial year. Japan

Display has been in the red for the last three years.

The owner of Fox News and pretty fair century Fox movie studio looks

to have benefited from a Trump bump. Fox said revenues rose by 1.5% to

$6.8 billion in the fourth quarter after rating is at its cable TV

business improved and grew in more advertisers. Fox is owned by media

mogul Rupert Murdoch. He's looking to buy the rest of the European

television station Sky that it does not already own for 14.5 billion

dollars. India starter motors, which owns Jaguar Land Rover, reported a

10% fall in income to just under 9.5 billion US dollars for the three

months between India and June -- April and June. There's been an

issue with the heavy vehicle business and that resulted in poor

results. But profitability gained over 40%. Union workers at Hyundai

are expected to begin a partial strike today, factory workers plan

to stop work on Monday next week to pressure the management to raise

wages. This is after that troubles were reported at the fifth biggest

world automaker. Profits have fallen for 14 straight quarters, or 3.5

years. Car sales have been hit hard by political tensions with China,

which accounts for one fifth of sales. What impact will a partial

strike have on the car company? Earlier I asked analyst James Rooney

in Seoul. Unfortunately there never is a good time for companies to

experience strikes. For Hyundai, this is one of the rights of summer.

For the past 30 years or so they have had this Midsummer strike

around wage negotiations and almost it would seem like a shame if it

wasn't happening. However, it's not a good time for them to be demanding

significant wage increases. Were talking about the order of 7% here,

very significant relevant to how inflation is today. Surely this will

have an impact on the bottom line of Hyundai going forward and the new

president of South Korea, James Comey has been focusing on job

creation and wage increases. Will this have an impact on negotiations?

I think the political environment with the new leadership certainly is

more favourable towards management, and for various reasons, I'm sure we

are all aware of, the leadership are under pressure after the scandal

with Park. Unfortunately for Hyundai that political environment includes

the whole missile issue that China has been so upset about, which has

cut off the growth in sales in Hyundai's most significant market,

which has shut. On the other hand, Hyundai is so used to having this

kind of event, they saw the sort of build it into their budget and later

on in the year they will make up the production shortfall in relation to

their annual bills -- they sort of. It's part of the fabric of the

industrial structure here unfortunately. Unions aren't as

powerful as you would think and strikes are quite rare but when they

happen they can be quite colourful. You may hear a lot of noise in the

street if that gets out of control. South Korean business expert James

Rooney in Seoul. Now for the latest in our series that's been running

across the BBC this week. Today we turn our attention to Silicon Valley

where technology giants like Google and Facebook are leading the way

when it comes to offering paid maternity leave. The US doesn't

require paid leave guarantees but Donald Trump's daughter is trying to

convince her father policy needs to change. Our North America technology

reporter Dave Lee has more. Macro a when Martha decided it was time to

have children she knew her job managing public relations for

technology companies would become untenable.

I've been thinking along time about all of the ways that work doesn't

align well with being a professional parent. She decided to set up her

own firm and set about putting in place family friendly policies, the

types of which most people in this country don't have access to. I

decided to be intentional about building a business when we can be

ourselves, the mothers among us but being clear with younger employees

that if they have things they want to pursue that fall inside of normal

work hours, they camp as you those also know we are not favouring one

stage of life over another or penalising one in favour of another

-- they can pursue. Raising a child in the US is very difficult and

costly. 12% of private sector companies offer paid parental leave

and the US is one of three countries in the world not to have a paid

parental leave law. But it's hoped Silicon Valley is starting a trend

that could change that. This organisation argues for better

coverage for American workers. There's been a lot of momentum from

tech companies around increasing access to maternity leave and in

particular family leave and medical leave, which is great. It shows it

makes good business sense, these companies wouldn't be doing it if it

wasn't good for bottom lines, and that's good for the economy and

those individual families and employees. One of those tech

companies is go daddy, the world's largest seller of Internet domain

names. The company has faced criticism in the past for being an

overly macho workplace, a scenario prevalent in technology. Like a lot

of tech companies we have lots of similar issues, we are trying to

resolve those and continuing to build an awesome culture where

people can do the best work of their lives. Anyone who is a new parent

can get 12 weeks paid to melt, welcomed their new family member,

the birthing mother gets another six weeks to recover as well physically

-- to welcome. Silicon Valley is perhaps best place to set the sample

given the fierce competition for top talent. The progress requires people

at the top of big companies to value both successful careers and happy

families. Dave Lee, BBC News, in San Francisco. We have half a minute to

tell you about the financial markets in Asia, despite the escalating

tension in the Korean peninsula and relations between North Korea and

the United States, we are seeing some gains in some of the Asian

bourses. The Nikkei 225 up 74, the All Ordinaries gaining 22. Thank you

so much for spending your time with us. I'm Rico Hizon, Sport Today is

up