News

Cannes – September 29, 2026 -- KT&G's ultra-slim cigarette brand ESSE surpassed KRW 1 trillion (approximately USD 700 million) in global sales in 2025, the South Korean tobacco maker announced at TFWA World 2026 in Cannes, France, running September 27 to October 1.

KT&G products now reach 179 duty-free stores across roughly 110 airports worldwide

The company entered the duty-free channel in 1995 with the launch of 88 Light in China. Three decades later, its flagship brands -- ESSE, RAISON, and BOHEM -- hold shelf space at 179 duty-free outlets spanning approximately 110 airports, including facilities in South Korea.

Atlanta – September 29, 2026 -- Corgi Insurance has appointed Stephen Segroves as Head of Pricing, tasking him with building rating models for its trucking program and commercial lines nationwide.

Segroves brings nearly two decades of actuarial and pricing experience to Corgi's underwriting build-out

Segroves most recently served as Senior Director, Actuary at Nirvana Insurance, where he oversaw insurance analytics and pricing operations. Prior to that role, he spent three years as Senior Director of Data Science at VoyageWorks, leading a cross-functional team of data scientists, actuaries, and data engineers to develop predictive and machine learning models aimed at improving commercial auto profitability.

Singapore – September 29, 2026 -- MagPro, operating as Nanjing CIPU Technology Co., Ltd., has launched the AeroLev 1850, a 1.85 MW-class air-cooled magnetic-bearing chiller designed to cut water use in AI data centers built in arid, high-ambient regions.

Platform eliminates cooling towers to remove water dependency

AeroLev 1850 uses a cooling-tower-free, oil-free magnetic-levitation architecture paired with intelligent controls, removing evaporative cooling water as an operational constraint for facilities in water-stressed markets. The chiller is rated to operate at ambient temperatures up to 45°C.

London – September 29, 2026 -- Nearly a third of the most AI-capable employees say they are very or extremely likely to quit their employer within a year, even as access to learning and development resources for the broader workforce dropped 8 percentage points, according to PwC's 2026 Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey of nearly 50,000 workers across 48 countries.

AI use jumps 10 points while training access shrinks

Some 64% of workers report using AI at work in the past 12 months, up 10 points year on year, and daily Generative AI use rose from 14% to 22%. Yet only 51% say they have access to the learning and development resources they need, down from 59% last year.

St. Helier – September 29, 2026 -- Petrus Advisers, which holds roughly 3.8% of Iveco Group N.V. shares, has publicly rejected Tata Motors' all-cash voluntary tender offer of €14.10 per share, arguing the bid fails to reflect fair value for Iveco shareholders.

Petrus says the offer undervalues Iveco against industry peers

In a presentation released today, Petrus Legal Strategies (Jersey) Limited and Petrus Advisers Limited outlined three core objections to the transaction. The investment firm argues the €14.10 price sits below comparable valuations for peer companies in the commercial vehicle sector.

Seoul – – September 29, 2026 -- SEMIFIVE has signed a contract worth approximately KRW 70.3 billion ($52 million) with a U.S.-based AI fabless company to develop a next-generation AI inference accelerator, marking the South Korean custom ASIC provider's largest single contract to date.

Deal size dwarfs prior order volumes

The contract alone equals more than 40% of SEMIFIVE's total 2025 orders of KRW 168.4 billion and roughly 60% of the KRW 118.9 billion in new orders booked during the first half of 2026. It also marks the company's first "Spec Hand-off" engagement in North America.

Los Angeles – – September 29, 2026 -- Congress has passed the Accelerating Access to Critical Therapies (ACT) for ALS Reauthorization Act of 2026 (H.R. 8205), sending the bipartisan bill to the President's desk just two days before the underlying program was set to expire on September 30, 2026.

Senate approval follows House passage, clearing the path for a presidential signature

The legislation cleared the U.S. House of Representatives before the Senate gave final approval, moving the bill to the President for signature. Once enacted, the law will extend core ACT for ALS programs through 2031, continuing federal support for ALS research infrastructure and expanded access to investigational therapies.

Singapore – September 29, 2026 -- Castrol has launched Castrol CORE, an integrated thermal management offer that shifts the company from selling standalone cooling products to providing end-to-end design, deployment and lifecycle services for data centres.

Castrol moves from product sales to full-service thermal management partnerships

Under Castrol CORE, the company will engage customers earlier in data centre infrastructure development, adding design capabilities to its existing deployment, start-up, operation and maintenance support. Castrol says the change responds to industry research showing growing demand for integrated thermal management solutions that cut the complexity of coordinating multiple suppliers, alongside concerns over supply chain disruption and the high cost of cooling-system failure.

Kaohsiung – September 29, 2026 -- Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry Co., Ltd., known as SUNON, will present a full chip-to-rack liquid cooling portfolio at the OCP Global Summit 2026, running October 12-15 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in California.

SUNON targets rising AI chip power densities with a three-tier cooling architecture

Under the banner "Build to Chill," SUNON's booth A19 display spans chip-level, server-level, and rack-level liquid cooling technologies. The company positions the integrated stack to address a range of power densities, operating environments, and system requirements as AI accelerators push thermal loads beyond the limits of traditional air cooling.

Atlanta – September 29, 2026 -- Hitron Technologies and Airties unveiled a joint connectivity platform at SCTE TechExpo26 designed to help internet service providers monetize small and medium business customers, a segment the companies say has been underserved by existing residential and enterprise offerings.

The solution pairs Hitron's high-performance SMB gateways with Airties Pro software, targeting the gap between low-cost residential broadband and complex, expensive enterprise-grade systems. Hitron and Airties are already working with several service providers to bring the combined offering to their SMB customer bases.