OIL
Mexico reveals big find
Mexico’s state oil company said deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico had revealed reserves that could multiply the country’s production of natural gas. Petroleos Mexicanos said the Nen 1 exploratory well found a deposit estimated to hold 11.3 billion cubic meters of gas. It said that could lead to production of 0.8 million cubic meters a day, well above this year’s daily average of 0.18 million cubic meters. The company said the find is a total of 4,350m deep, including 1,493m of water. The well is 113km northeast of Coatzacoalcos.
MINING
Rio Tinto investing in Kitimat
Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto yesterday said it would pump a further US$2.7 billion into its Kitimat aluminum smelter in Canada to meet growing demand from the Asia--Pacific region. The new investment will allow the US$3.3 billion project in British Columbia to be completed in 2014, increasing the smelter’s production capacity by more than 48 percent to about 420,000 tonnes of aluminum a year. Jacynthe Cote, chief executive of Rio Tinto Alcan, the company’s aluminum division, said the first metal was expected to be produced in the first half of 2014.
BANKING
RBS sells 918 pubs
State-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) yesterday said it had sold 918 pubs to Scottish & Newcastle, the British division of Dutch brewer Heineken, for £422 million (US$662 million). The sale is part of Royal Bank of Scotland’s ongoing plans to sell off non-core assets after receiving an enormous government bailout. In a separate announcement, Heineken said it would combine the 918 pubs with its existing portfolio of 462 outlets in Britain. The Dutch firm added that the acquisition would make it one of the leading pub owners and operators in Britain.
AUTOMAKERS
US November sales up 14%
US auto sales rose 14 percent last month, paced by gains at Chrysler Group LLC and Volkswagen AG, as consumers returned to showrooms even without the lure of a big year-end sale. Chrysler and VW posted the highest percentage gains at 45 percent and 41 percent respectively. Others posting double-digit gains were Hyundai Motor Co at 22 percent, Nissan Motor Co at 19 percent and Ford Motor Co at 13 percent. General Motors and Toyota Motor Co trailed with increases of 7 percent. Honda Motor, which has been the slowest of the major Japanese automakers to recover from supply disruptions caused by the March earthquake, saw sales fall 6 percent.
BANKING
Australian banks downgraded
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) yesterday said it had downgraded the credit ratings of the big four Australian banks as part of changes to the way it assesses risk. Westpac Banking Corp, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ Banking Group and National Australia Bank all had their issuer credit ratings downgraded by one notch from “AA” to “AA-” The Macquarie Group had its long-term rating downgraded from “A-” to “BBB.” The move, which was widely expected, came after S&P had earlier in the week downgraded the ratings of major US banks, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day