INDIA
Equity investment opened
The government will allow qualified foreign investors to invest directly in domestic equities as the country seeks to boost capital inflows and reduce stock market volatility. The central bank and market regulator are expected to announce the change that might take effect by Jan. 15, the government said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The country’s benchmark stock index completed its second-worst yearly loss last year, with the BSE India Sensitive Index, or Sensex, slumping 25 percent. Foreign investors have pulled out US$380 million from the country’s equities last year, compared with a record inflow of US$29 billion in 2010.
CHINA
Beijing adjusts vehicle taxes
The Beijing city government adjusted vehicle taxes yesterday to promote lower-emission cars, Xinhua news agency reported. Authorities raised taxes on vehicles with engine displacement of more than 2 liters and lowered taxes on vehicles with smaller engines, Xinhua said. The rates will result in lower taxes on 70 percent of vehicles.
SAUDI ARABIA
GDP growth of 3.1% forecast
The country’s economic growth will average 3.1 percent this year, compared with 6.8 percent last year, as the kingdom cuts oil production, Jadwa Investment Co said. Production will fall to 8.8 million barrels a day on average from 9.3 million barrels a day as Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members cut output, while Libya and Iraq raise their production, the diversified investment business said.
AUTOMAKERS
Porsche sued for US$2.6bn
Porsche Automobil Holding SE faces a suit from a group of investment funds seeking about 2 billion euros (US$2.6 billion) in damages allegedly suffered from the carmaker’s failed takeover attempt of Volkswagen AG in 2008. The group, whose members were not identified, filed the lawsuit in the district court of Stuttgart, Germany, according to a statement released on the OTS newswire late on Friday. The plaintiffs also filed an arbitration application regarding Volkswagen, two members of the Volkswagen supervisory board and one member of the management board of Volkswagen.
TECHNOLOGY
Apple designer knighted
The British monarch has awarded a knighthood to Jonathan Paul Ive, a British citizen and head of Apple Inc’s design team since the mid-1990s. Ive received an Order of the British Empire for services to design and enterprise. Ive is credited with helping late Apple founder Steve Jobs bring the consumer-electronics company back from the brink of financial ruin in the late 1990s with his whimsical design for the iMac computer, which originally came in bright colors at a time bland shades dominated the PC world. He later helped transform Apple into the envy of Silicon Valley with the designs for the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.
CAMERAS
Kodak loses third director
Eastman Kodak Co says another member of its board of directors has resigned — the third director to exit the struggling company in the past two weeks. The latest director to relinquish the post is Laura Tyson, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. Kodak did not say why Tyson resigned. On Tuesday, Kodak disclosed that Adam Clammer and Herald Chen resigned from the board the previous week.
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