Hong Kong retailers suffer from slump

Gold monkey figurines sit on display at a Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd. jewelry store in Hong Kong

Hong Kong retailers Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd. and Sa Sa International Holdings Ltd. reported slumping sales over Chinese New Year as the number of mainland tourist visitors tumbled.
Same-store sales over Jan 25 –
Feb. 14 was 28 percent lower than the new-year period in 2015, Chow Tai Fook said in a Hong Kong exchange statement yesterday, as it warned of a worse performance in the current quarter compared with the previous one. Sa Sa reported a 19 percent decline in sales as the number of transactions by Chinese tourists sank 18 percent, according to a separate statement.
China’s economic slowdown and campaigns against graft and extravagance have hurt luxury retailers in Hong Kong and Macau, as Chinese tourists avoided those cities. The number of mainland visitors to Hong Kong slumped about 16 percent from a year earlier in November and December, capping seven months of declines, according to latest figures from the city’s tourism board.
Chow Tai Fook’s management “anticipates the retail business environment will continue to be challenging for the fourth quarter and the sales performance will be worse than that of the third quarter,” the company said in its statement. The jewelry retailer’s financial year ends in March. Kyoungwha Kim, Bloomberg

A close-up view of Aston Martin’s RapidE concept vehicle

Aston Martin gets boost from China for first electric car

Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd., maker of sports cars such as the DB9, plans to team up with LeEco of China to help bring its electric RapidE vehicle to market by 2018.
LeEco intends to provide the powertrain and battery pack for the vehicle to be built at Aston Martin’s factory in Gaydon, England, the companies said in Frankfurt yesterday. The planned joint venture secures financing to take the battery-powered version of the current Rapide sports car from concept to production.
Sports-car makers are increasingly being lured into the electric-car market, drawn by Tesla Motors Inc.’s emergence and tightening environmental regulations.
While electric motors offer the promise of rapid acceleration, they lack the bone-tingling sound of traditional combustion-powered sports cars. Bloomberg