European stock exchanges closed generally weaker on Friday although the London FTSE 100 index gained 0.10 percent to finish at 6,190 points in a shortened pre-holiday session.
In Paris the CAC 40 fell 1.02 percent to finish at 5,453.94 while in Frankfurt the Dax shed 1.08 percent to close at 6,503.13.
The Euro Stoxx 50 index of leading eurozone shares fell 0.94 percent to 4073.50.
In London cruise group Carnival added 2.48 percent to close at ?25.99 on positive financial results.
Mobile phone giant Vodafone fell 1.22 percent to ?1.42 after confirming that it would bid for the two-thirds stake in Hutchison Essor of India held by the Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, an acquisition that could cost it US$10 billion.
In Paris, where profit-taking took a toll, aerospace group EADS fell 0.08 percent to 25.7 euros, while stock market operator Euronext shed 1.11 percent to close at 89.25 euros.
Engineering giant Alstom jumped 1.41 percent to 100.80 euros despite denying a report that it had won a 3.6-billion-euro order from China for 1,500 freight locomotives.
In Frankfurt Deutsche Bank lost 1.09 percent to finish at 100.29 euros after announcing on Thursday that it had agreed to a US$208 million settlement following a probe into improper trading in its mutual funds.
Elsewhere there were declines of 0.60 percent to 14,066.1 on the Ibex-35 in Madrid, 1.04 percent to 40,841 on the SP/Mib in Milan, 0.78 percent to 490.77 on the AEX in Amsterdam and 0.56 percent to 8,726.67 on the Swiss Market Index.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts