Asian stocks fell for a fifth day after Fortis received a US$16 billion bailout and concern grew that a US rescue plan will fail to prevent more bank collapses.
Westpac Banking Corp, Australia’s third-largest bank, fell 3.5 percent, and financial shares reversed earlier gains as three European governments agreed to invest in Belgium’s Fortis and the UK seized Bradford & Bingley PLC.
“It’s too early to say if this bailout will lead to long-term optimism,” said Olan Caperina, who helps manage about US$6.7 billion at BPI Asset Management Inc in Manila.
“The magnitude of the bailout is an indication of the size of the trouble and the possibility that other problems may still be lurking,” Caperina said.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 2.4 percent to 111.07 as of 3:51pm in Tokyo, with financial companies accounting for 28 percent of the drop. The gauge has tumbled 29 percent this year as the credit turmoil caused the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Wachovia Corp is in talks to sell itself to Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo & Co, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
Most benchmark indexes in Asia dropped. Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average lost 1.3 percent to 11,743.61.
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],”
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
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