■TRAVEL
China eases visa rules
China widened market access to Hong Kong companies and eased visa rules for Chinese tourists leaving China to visit the city and Taiwan, expanding an accord aimed at bolstering the economy of the former British colony. Chinese tourism groups will be able to leave China to visit Taiwan and Hong Kong using a single visa as part of an accord signed yesterday, a statement distributed to reporters in Hong Kong said. The accord loosens restrictions across 20 industries in total, including banking, securities, rail and research. Today’s accord is the sixth addition to the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2003.
■TELECOMS
AT&T, Verizon reach deal
AT&T Inc said on Friday it would buy the assets of Verizon Wireless in 79 mainly rural areas for US$2.35 billion, a deal that will affect more than 1 million subscribers. Verizon Wireless was forced to sell the service areas, which are spread over 18 states, to satisfy regulatory conditions of its purchase of Alltel Corp. The areas are mainly Alltel territories that overlap with Verizon’s own coverage, but also some Verizon territories and areas covered by Rural Cellular, another carrier Verizon bought last year.
■FINANCE
Wells Fargo raises offering
Wells Fargo said on Friday it raised its share offering to US$8.6 billion amid strong investor demand as the banking group moved to comply with a “stress test” requirement to boost capital. “Our common stock offering was heavily oversubscribed, reflecting, in our view, confidence on the part of both institutional and retail investors in Wells Fargo’s business model and financial strength,” chief financial officer Howard Atkins said. Wells Fargo was among 10 banks reported to be short on capital, based on the “stress tests” meant to gauge the capital adequacy ratios of banks to cope with any further financial market turmoil.
■MALAYSIA
Bank lowers forecast
Malaysia’s central bank said it would lower the country’s economic forecast for this year amid a worse-than-expected slump in exports, predicting the economy would recover in the second half of the year. “The export contraction was much greater than was earlier envisaged,” Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz said in an interview in Singapore yesterday. “We will be revising our numbers as well. The important part is the domestic sector continues to grow.” Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy is facing its first contraction in a decade, with the central bank currently forecasting it will shrink by 1 percent this year or expand by that amount. The 1.5 percentage points of interest-rate cuts since late November and the government’s 67 billion ringgit (US$19 billion) of stimulus measures are enough for now, Zeti said.
■RECESSION
More stimulus needed: IMF
Asian nations should be prepared to make further stimulus moves to boost their economies next year, the South China Morning Post reported, citing an IMF official. Joshua Felman, assistant director of the IMF’s Asia and Pacific Department, expects the Asian economies to remain weak, the Hong Kong newspaper said. “You have programs, many of which are set to expire this year and you’re probably going to need to continue them next year,” Felman was quoted as saying. The IMF projects Asian economies to grow 1.3 percent this year, down from 5.1 percent last year.
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