JAPAN
Cabinet approves stimulus
The Cabinet yesterday approved an extra budget to help finance US$63 billion of stimulus spending aimed at spurring the country’s lackluster economy as it battles deflation and a strong yen. The package includes financial support for small businesses and spending to boost local economies. The government estimates it will help lift the nation’s GDP by 0.6 percentage points. “This is an emergency economic package to deal with a rising yen and deflation,” Minister of Finance Yoshihiko Noda told reporters. The extra budget is likely to be submitted to the parliament later this week for final approval.
GERMANY
Consumers still confident
Consumers are at their most bullish in three years, a survey suggested yesterday, as Europe’s top economy steams ahead and unemployment remains relatively low. The index for next month, drawn up by the GfK market research group, stabilized at 4.9 points, the same level as this month. A GfK spokeswoman told reporters the survey aimed to predict confidence levels for the coming month. For the fifth consecutive month, consumers had a rosier view of the economy in the future, GfK said.
AUTOMOBILES
Switzerland probes BMW
Switzerland’s competition authority said yesterday it had opened an investigation into German car group BMW, following signs that its dealers abroad were refusing to sell to Swiss residents. “The Competition Commission has opened an inquiry against BMW Group because it may be preventing the sale of new vehicles to clients in Switzerland,” the official monopolies watchdog said in a statement. The company could risk a fine of up to 10 percent of its turnover over the past three years, the commission said.
ENERGY
Vestas Q3 earnings down
Vestas A/S, the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines, posted a 24 percent drop in third-quarter earnings to 126 million euros (US$177 million) and said it would lay off about 3,000 workers in Denmark and Sweden to adjust to lower demand in Europe. Sales dropped to 1.7 billion euros from 1.8 billion euros. The company said yesterday it shipped a total of 719 wind turbines, or 27 percent less than in the third quarter of last year.
STEEL
Profit to slow: ArcelorMittal
The leading global steelmaker ArcelorMittal warned that operating profits would slow further, in a statement yesterday. ArcelorMittal, by far the biggest producer of steel in the world, said that demand remained moderate even though there were differences in demand by region. The group said it now expected its gross operating profit to be steady in the fourth quarter at US$1.5 billion to US$1.9 billion. In the third quarter, the group reported an equivalent profit figure of US$2.3 billion.
BANKING
UBS bounces back
Swiss bank UBS yesterday posted a third-quarter net profit of 1.66 billion Swiss francs (US$1.71 billion), exceeding analysts’ forecasts as it restored client cashflow for the first time since the financial crisis. The net profit attributable to shareholders compared with a SF564 million loss during the same period last year. Net new money reached SF1.2 billion in the third quarter, marking a turnaround from a trend of withdrawals by fearful clients, with strong business in the Asia-Pacific region.
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