SOUTH KOREA
Household debt soars
National household debt, a major economic risk factor, rose sharply last year, raising concerns about an increase in defaults, a private credit appraiser reported yesterday. At the end of December, financial institutions held 722.8 trillion won (US$642 billion) in outstanding loans to the household sector, up 6.9 percent from a year earlier, according to the Korea Credit Bureau. That figure included 124.1 trillion won in unsecured household loans, up 19.4 percent from a year earlier and 311.5 trillion won in mortgage loans, up 9.5 percent, it said. The bureau warned that an increase in interest rates would turn more household debts sour. At the beginning of last month the government launched a task force involving financial regulators, government officials, bankers and experts to curb the excessive growth of household loans.
FINANCE
JPMorgan staff probed
About 120 former and current employees of JPMorgan Securities Japan Co failed to declare more than US$8 million of income obtained through stock options, a report said yesterday. They bought shares in their employer’s parent company, JPMorgan Chase & Co, at a discount, but never declared the profit after selling, Kyodo News said citing unnamed sources, adding the total amounted to ¥700 million (US$8.4 million). Many of them are believed to have traded the shares in foreign accounts, which Japan’s taxation authorities have difficulty checking. Most of those involved amended their tax returns following inspections by the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau, Kyodo said.
UNITED STATES
TAA expansions expire
Tens of thousands of workers displaced by foreign competition face being excluded from a program to help them because of congressional disputes over federal spending and the administration’s trade policy. Expansions of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program incorporated in the 2009 economic stimulus act expired on Saturday after efforts to extend them were rebuffed in the House of Representatives and Senate last week. Of the 400,000 workers certified to receive TAA services since the stimulus act passed two years ago, 170,000 might not have been eligible under the pre-2009 criteria, according to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. The program has provided retraining and financial aid to trade-displaced workers since 1962. White House economic adviser Gene Sperling estimated that 155,000 US citizens will lose access to the job training if the expanded program is not continued.
CONSTRUCTION
Business up in Middle East
Construction contractors in the Middle East and North Africa are set to have higher earnings and improved backlogs in the fourth quarter as orders pick up, Deutsche Bank AG said. “Overall, we expect the MENA [Middle East and North Africa] contractors under our coverage to post an 18 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in earnings, after a dreadful third quarter,” analysts Nabil Ahmed and Athmane Benzerroug said in a report e-mailed yesterday. Construction firms were hit by slumping orders after the financial crisis caused half of all planned real-estate projects in Dubai to be canceled. Drake & Scull International PJSC remains the analysts’ top pick, the report showed. The Dubai-based construction and engineering company won US$2 billion of new contracts in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Oman during the fourth quarter, outperforming competitors, Deutsche Bank said.
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