COMMODITIES
Glencore posts profit rise
Commodities giant Glencore International PLC said its full-year profit rose 7 percent last year to reach US$4.06 billion. The Swiss-based company benefited from rising prices for key raw materials and steadily growing demand in developing countries. Glencore reported a profit of US$3.8 billion for the full year 2010. The company said in a statement yesterday that income attributable to shareholders reached US$4.05 billion last year. Glencore, which received a US$10 billion cash injection with its partial IPO in May last year, is seeking to merge with Anglo-Swiss mining group Xstrata PLC later this year.
SOUTH KOREA
Reserves climb US$4.46bn
The country’s foreign--exchange reserves rose last month to a record as the euro and pound strengthened against the US dollar and the central bank made gains by managing assets. Reserves climbed by US$4.46 billion to US$315.8 billion at the end of last month, the Bank of Korea said in a statement yesterday. The country’s reserves were the seventh-largest in the world, trailing China, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Brazil and Switzerland, as of the end of January.
AUTOMAKERS
Nissan may revive Datsun
Japan’s biggest business daily says Nissan Motor Co might bring back the Datsun, the brand symbolic of the Japanese automaker’s roots. Nissan chief executive Carlos Ghosn has often talked about reviving the Datsun brand. The Yokohama-based automaker said yesterday that it does not comment on future model plans. The Nikkei Shimbun, reported on Friday that Nissan might revive Datsun as early as 2014 for low-cost cars in emerging markets. Datsun debuted in Japan in 1932, and hit US showrooms more than 50 years ago. It was discontinued globally starting in 1981 to unify the model lineup under the Nissan brand.
SEMICONDUCTORS
AMD stake bought by spin-off
A microchip manufacturer controlled by the Abu Dhabi government says it has reached an agreement to acquire a minority stake held by former owner Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The chip company, Milpitas, California-based GlobalFoundries, said yesterday that it would acquire AMD’s share, but retain the producer as a key customer. GlobalFoundries said that the deal fulfills its ambition of becoming an independent foundry. Financial details were not immediately available. GlobalFoundries was founded as a spin-off of AMD in 2009. Abu Dhabi’s government-owned Advanced Technology Investment Co took a majority stake following the separation.
PETROLEUM
S Korea investing in UAE
A South Korean energy group is to invest US$2 billion as part of a project to develop three oil fields in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said yesterday. The state-run Korea National Oil Corp and energy firm GS Energy will hold a combined 40 percent stake in the US$5 billion project, with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co taking the remaining stake, the Knowledge Economy Ministry said.
The development of the oil fields — two of them onshore and one offshore — will start this month, it said, adding that the project is expected to see output of 43,000 barrels per day once production begins as early as 2014. Under the 30-year deal, South Korea will take 17,000 barrels of oil per day and will be allowed the entire output in case of emergency, it said.
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