11/08/2017 Asia Business Report

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

More troubles for the founder and formal boss of Uber. A lawsuit for

fraud. And how much is too much? We break down what expecting parents

should be expecting for their newborns.

Good morning, Asia. Hello, world. Welcome to another edition of Asia

Business Report. It's a Friday. Thank you for joining us. I'm Rico

Hizon. We start off with Uber. The former Chief Executive has had a

tough few months. He was forced out of his job in June after a series of

embarrassments for the company. Now he is being sued by a venture

capital firm for fraud. Earlier, I spoke to a North American reporter,

Dave Lee, who was at the headquarters in San Francisco.

Basically, one of the biggest investors in Uber are suing them

because they say he fraudulently added board seats to Uber to fill

them with allies of himself. Now we are in a situation where he is the

former CEO. He wanted to come back and it is reported he would use the

allies to make that possible. Venture Capital say that would have

been done fraud at me. -- fraudulent. There were sexual

harassment scandals and other things. They said if they did not

know about these things they would not have allowed these board seats

to be added. It is unprecedented. They own 13% of Uber. It is a

powerful voice on the board and they are unhappy. What does the lawsuit

need for Travis? -- mean. He could be removed altogether. When he was

ousted as CEO in June he did not leave completely. He went on to the

board. The seat he took was one of the three seats he added that are

now being disputed. If this lawsuit is successful, those three seats

would be removed and presumably so would Travis. The company that he

was running at the beginning of the year, successfully, he has now been

ousted as CEO and could be kicked off the board as well. Dramatic

consequences if the lawsuit is successful. Also, Wemo, another

company, they are taking Uber to court for stealing cyber technology.

They are saying this shows the nature of Travis's stewardship of

Uber. They think this adds to their case. That will have implications in

their case as well. That was Dave Lee outside the San Francisco Uber

headquarters. Staying with Silicon Valley. Snapchat just released its

numbers and they were disappointing below unless expectations of. They

lost nearly $450 million in the three months until June. That is a

lot of money. They say they added 7 million daily users during that

period. Slightly lower than the first quarter. The platform seems to

have fallen out of favour with investors, the IPO, pricing them at

$17 a piece. On the first day of trade the stock hit a record high of

nearly $30 a share. But it has been on a slippery slope ever since. Last

week the shares hit an all-time low of nearly $13. The meal kit company

Blue Apron lost a fifth of its value two months after going public. They

say the cost of building a new centre would add to losses this

year. They are also being squeezed by stiff competition from Amazon

offering a similar service last month. They are joining a growing

list of technology start-ups failing to live up to expectations ahead of

their share prices. Now to a massive investment by Japan's Telco giant,

Softbank, which is on a spending spree. From Uber, Lyft, to Fanatix,

they are eager to invest. Late last night it was reported they will find

$2.5 billion into India's on line retailer, Flipcart. But if they are

going to do that, not all of them are going to be successful. Why are

not all of these Japanese investments successful? Some

acquisitions are successful, some are not. I want to highlight two

cases. First of all, Japan Post. The company went public just over two

years ago in what was the biggest share sale in Japan for three

decades. The company just reported its latest results after the bell

yesterday. While it finally started to make some money, the spotlight is

still on this massive write down because of its acquisition of

Australia's Tall Holdings. They bought them in February, 2015, just

ahead of the IPO, and it paid $6.5 billion for it, but it had to write

down 3.5 billion. Yesterday we were telling you about Toshiba which

finally reported its results for the last year. But it has lost nearly $9

billion last year. And that is mainly because of the disastrous

acquisition of US nuclear company, Westinghouse. For that, Toshiba paid

nearly five and a half billion dollars. Bennett had to write down

more than $6 billion. -- but then. Would you believe it, both of those

acquisitions were made by this person, the boss of Toshiba just

over a decade ago. He was brought in by the Japanese government to lead

Japan Post ahead of the share sale. He has not -- he has stepped down

because of health reasons. He has not made any comments. People have

been asking why those acquisitions were made without due diligence.

Some acquisitions work and some do not. Thank you so much. Marika Oi.

And now for the final instalment of the Business of Birth series from

this week. Department stores offer baby preparation services around the

world to help expecting parents get what they need. You could be

spending thousands of dollars. What do you need for a baby starter kit?

We went out and about in New York to find out. When we were growing up we

never had these. I never even had a car seat. . Shopping for a baby is

not what used to be. Call this the stroller pit. Parents would start

crying because there are so many options. There are so many choices.

Just take strollers. Jamie is an expert on infant gear. There are

many cribs. People do reverse investment. They spend more on the

crib than the mattress. It started with the Bugaboo stroller. It was a

Renaissance to be honest. They came out with a really cool stroller and

all the others had to step up their game. That trickled down. In

America, women are waiting longer to have children to be by that time,

they often have more disposable income and the industry is changing

to cater to them. This year, this was the global market for babycare

products. $66.8 billion. For all of the cuteness, this is a

billion-dollar industry, with baby companies focus on how to get

expectant parents to spend more. And the choices can be bewildering. This

China's parents know how daunting it can be. -- child's. It is geared

towards wealthy parents. It is very expensive. You can get so caught up

in it, especially on Instagram, when you look at some of the perfect

lives some of these families have. They are always so beautiful and

they have wonderful homes and they have the perfect baby items and you

feel like you need them. Take the desire for every parents to get the

best for their children, add the commercial desire to keep up with

the Joneses, and it seems like child play. Join the conversation on line.

We are asking how much money you need to spend on a newborn. Use the

hashtag, #businessofbirth. The markets. Nearly 30 billion US

dollars were wiped off the value of blue-chip stocks overnight as

investors remained spooked by the issue with North Korea and America.

This is how it ended. The DOW falling. The NASDAQ 135 points down.

The biggest one day drop in almost three months. As for Asia, well, as

you can see right now on the market screens, following the footsteps of

Wall Street, all lower. Thank you so much for investing your time with

us. Have a productive Friday, everyone. I am Rico Hizon. Goodbye

for now.