CONGLOMERATEs
LG to boost spending 12%
LG Group, whose companies include the world’s third-largest maker of mobile phones and the No. 2 producer of LCD televisions, will boost spending by 12 percent to a record next year to further growth. The group companies will invest 16.3 trillion won (US$14 billion) in capital expenditure and 4.7 trillion won in research and development next year, LG said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. South Korea’s fourth-largest family run industrial group is investing a combined 18.8 trillion won this year. The move will “accelerate the development of new growth engines,” the statement said.
GERMANY
Tax revenues up last month
Tax receipts rose last month as economic growth helped trim unemployment and company tax revenue expanded, a finance ministry report showed. Receipts, led by income tax, grew 2.5 percent compared with November last year, the ministry said yesterday in its monthly report. The Berlin-based ministry expects this year’s revenue to match receipts from last year, mainly because of changes to tax paid on child allowances and lower returns from a flat tax on interest from investments. Tax receipts in the first 11 months rose 0.2 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said.
THAILAND
Exports jump 28.5%
Export growth accelerated last month as Asian demand supported sales, justifying the central bank’s move to raise interest rates earlier this month. Overseas sales increased 28.5 percent last month from a year earlier to US$17.7 billion after rising 15.7 percent in October, the commerce ministry said in Nonthaburi Province on the outskirts of Bangkok yesterday. The median estimate of 10 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 21 percent gain. The Bank of Thailand unexpectedly raised its benchmark rate for the third time this year to 2 percent on Dec. 1, signaling policy makers view inflation as a bigger threat than slowing growth.
BANKING
Fullterton makes purchase
Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte, a unit of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte, bought a 15 percent stake in Vietnam’s Mekong Development Bank. The purchase helped lift registered capital at the lender, based in the southern An Giang Province, to 3 trillion dong (US$154 million) from 1 trillion dong, the Vietnamese bank said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The two companies also agreed on a plan that would allow Fullerton to increase the stake to 20 percent next year, it said, without giving a specific timeframe. The investment allows Mekong Development to meet a central bank requirement to raise additional capital as the nation seeks to bolster lenders’ financial strength.
FOOD
Indonesia drops import duty
Indonesia, stepping up rice shipments from overseas, will abolish a duty on imports for state food company Bulog to help stabilize domestic prices, according to Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu. “The finance ministry has agreed to remove the import duty, it just needs an internal process to issue the ruling,” Pangestu told reporters yesterday. Imports are charged 450 rupiah a kilogram (US$50 a tonne), according to Bulog last month. Indonesia has returned to the rice market this year as stockpiles fell to less than minimum levels and production growth failed to meet an official target.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the