FINANCE
Buffett ends cancer therapy
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has completed radiation treatment for prostate cancer, according to a newspaper owned by the larger-than-life financier. “It’s a great day for me. Today I had my 44th and last day of radiation,” the tycoon told executives of newspapers he recently acquired on Friday, according to a report on the Web site of the Omaha World-Herald. Buffett, the mastermind and chief executive of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, announced in April that he had an early stage of the cancer and would undergo treatment. “I’ll be feeling the side effects for a few weeks yet, but I am so glad to say that’s over,” the Omaha World-Herald quoted the 82-year-old as saying.
SOUTH KOREA
Group cuts growth forecast
A state-run think-tank yesterday cut its forecast for the country’s growth this year to 2.5 percent, citing the eurozone debt crisis. The Korea Development Institute’s latest outlook is well below the government’s revised growth forecast in June of 3.3 percent, and over a percentage point below a May prediction of 3.6 percent. It said Asia’s fourth-largest economy is expected to expand 3.4 percent next year, gradually recovering from the slowdown caused by slow exports and sluggish domestic demand.
RETAIL
Major drop in store sales
Sales at South Korea’s top department stores fell for a third consecutive month last month, data showed yesterday, underlining the impact of an economic slowdown on domestic consumer demand. The sales at stores run by the country’s three major operators — Lotte, Shinsegae and Hyundai — were down 6.9 percent last month compared with the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. It followed a 1.3 percent drop in July and marked the third monthly sales decline in a row on a year-on-year basis. Sales at discount stores declined 3.3 percent last month from a year earlier, marking the fifth straight monthly fall.
RUSSIA
Bank makes big investment
The country’s central bank yesterday announced plans to go ahead with the long-delayed auction of a 7.58-percent stake in main lender Sberbank following a recent improvement in global market sentiment. The Bank of Russia said the sell-off would leave the state holding a 50 percent stake plus one voting share in the country’s main financial institution. A bank statement said the stake would be auctioned off in both dollars as global depository shares on the London Stock Exchange and rubles as ordinary shares appearing on Moscow’s MICEX exchange. The bidding process was expected to close tomorrow.
AUTOMAKERS
Firm OKs deal with unions
The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union is to focus on reaching an agreement with Ford as negotiations continue with all of Detroit’s Big Three automakers as a strike deadline was looming yesterday, the head of the union said. CAW President Ken Lewenza said on Sunday that Ford has shown a willingness to reach an agreement. He said talks with Chrysler and General Motors are to continue, but high level talks are to be focused on Ford. A strike at all three automakers would affect about 20,000 workers and about 16 percent of North American auto production. The CAW represents about 4,500 workers at Ford, 8,000 workers at GM and another 8,000 at Chrysler.
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
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