??STEEL
Essar plans Esmark deal
Indian steelmaker Essar Steel said yesterday it planned to acquire US steel company Esmark, valuing the deal at US$1.1 billion, as it pushes ahead with an aggressive North American expansion drive. With the planned buy, Essar will have nearly 7 million tonnes of steelmaking capacity in the US and Canada, it said in a release. ??his is one more step in realizing our global steel vision of having world-class, low-cost assets, with a global footprint,??Essar Global chairman Shashi Ruia said in the statement. Essar said it was offering US$17 per share for West Virginia-based Esmark Inc.
??SEMICONDUCTORS
Q1 sales rise 3.8%
Global semiconductor sales rose 3.8 percent in the first quarter to US$63.4 billion from a year earlier as consumers bought more electronic devices, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a statement yesterday. Sales dropped 5.1 percent in the first quarter from US$66.8 billion in the fourth, ??eflecting a normal seasonal decline,??the San Jose, California-based industry group said. ??ales were buoyed by growing consumer purchases of electronic products in world markets, more than offsetting the effects of a slowing US economy,??George Scalise, president of the group, said in the statement.
??TAIWAN
Production value doubles
The total production value of companies rose by 47.8 percent to NT$24.19 trillion (US$794.6 billion) in 2006 compared with 2001, but the growth of the average annual wage slowed to 7.1 percent over the same period, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said on Wednesday. The official assessment of the manufacturing and service sectors, held once every five years, compared the statistics for 2006 with the figures for 2001. ??espite the exodus of local manufacturers in the past decade, data shows a revival of Taiwan?? industry productivity, especially in manufacturing where production value increased from 2001 by 60 percent to NT$15.55 trillion in 2007,??said Huang Jiann-jong (暺?遣銝?, deputy director of the Bureau of Census.
??BANKING
Economic fallout limited
The scale of losses and the economic fallout from the global credit crunch may not be as bad as feared and subprime losses could end up costing less than half market forecasts, the Bank of England said yesterday. The bank is still concerned about the consequences of the credit crisis but Deputy Governor John Gieve said conditions could stabilize soon. Current market estimates of subprime mortgage losses amount to nearly US$400 billion and the IMF has said the wider cost to the financial sector could rise to US$1 trillion. ??ll of them are potentially significant overestimates of the losses within the wider economy associated with the financial market crisis,??the BoE said in its twice-yearly Financial Stability Report, estimating actual losses could be closer to US$170 billion.
??UNITED STATES
Rate cut forecast
The Federal Reserve may cut interest rates to 1 percent as US housing foreclosures worsen, said Mark Mobius, who oversees US$47 billion in emerging-market equities at Templeton Asset Management Ltd. Mobius told Bloomberg Television yesterday that the dollar?? slide, down more than 7 percent against the euro and the yen this year, is likely to slow because its ??ompletely bombed out ??I was looking at 1 percent a few months back. I still adhere to that.??Agencies
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
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained