BANKING
Plan for Europe’s banks
European banks should be supervised by a cross-border authority providing bloc-wide deposit cover and a rescue pot funded by taxes on financial institutions, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday. The head of the EU’s executive arm told yesterday’s Financial Times newspaper that the ambitious plan could be realized by next year without the need for existing treaties to be changed.
SOUTH KOREA
IMF revises growth forecast
The IMF warned yesterday of likely slower growth for South Korea this year because of the faltering global economy, joining a series of think tanks which have slashed their predictions. The IMF, after its six-monthly meeting with Seoul authorities, said growth would likely be weaker than the 3.5 percent the fund projected in April, possibly down to 3.25 percent. The export-reliant economy, Asia’s fourth-largest, expanded 2.8 percent year-on-year in the first quarter — the weakest growth in two-and-a-half years.
INDIA
Industrial output slows
India’s industrial output grew a weaker-than-expected 0.1 percent year on year in April, official data showed yesterday, amid growing concerns about a slowdown in the economy. The manufacturing sector, which accounts for most of the industrial production index, expanded 0.1 percent, with production of capital goods, a key indicator of investment, shrinking 16.3 percent. Data published on May 31 showed the Indian economy expanded 5.3 percent in the January-to-March period, the slowest quarterly growth figure in nine years.
SWITZERLAND
Growth forecast goes up
The Swiss government raised its this year’s growth forecast yesterday, saying robust domestic demand was helping to offset the ill effects of the strong Swiss franc on exports, though a worsening of the eurozone crisis had the potential to hamper momentum. Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Economics now sees growth of 1.4 percent for this year, up from a March forecast of 0.8 percent. It sees inflation at minus-0.4 percent this year. The Swiss National Bank is also expected to lift its growth forecast from “nearly 1 percent,” as the cap it imposed on the safe-haven franc last September helps shield the economy
AUTOMAKERS
VW eyes bigger China output
Volkswagen AG said it plans to increase production capacity to four million cars by 2018 in China, the world’s biggest vehicle market. VW called China one of its most important markets and said on Jan. 6 that it would increase annual capacity to three million cars by 2016, as part of a plan to invest 14 billion euros (US$17.5 billion) to expand Chinese production and models. VW delivered 2.3 million vehicles in the Greater China region last year. The automaker trailed General Motors Co, whose sales in China rose 8.3 percent to 2.55 million last year.
INVESTMENT
Syndicated loan for Alibaba
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) has begun signing a US$3 billion syndicated loan with a total of 19 banks today to back the privatization of its Hong Kong-listed unit and the buyback of an about 20 percent stake of itself from Yahoo Inc, two people familiar with the matter said. The loan was amended last month to allow Alibaba to eventually take on as much as US$4 billion of debt, a person familiar with the matter said on May 25.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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