FINANCE
Noyer calls for new EU hub
The City of London should no longer be the euro’s main financial center so the eurozone can “control” most financial business in the region, France’s central bank governor said in an interview published yesterday. Banque de France Governor Christian Noyer said there was “no rationale” for allowing the UK to be the “offshore” financial hub of the eurozone. “Most of the euro business should be done inside the euro area. It’s linked to the capacity of the central bank to provide liquidity and ensure oversight of its own currency,” Noyer told the Financial Times while touring Asia to promote Paris as a trading center for Chinese yuan.
OIL INDUSTRY
BP to expand in Indonesia
The Indonesian subsidiary of British oil giant BP yesterday said a US$12.1 billion deal to expand its liquid natural gas operations in the country had been given final approval. The deal, announced last month during Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s state visit to London, will allow BP to develop a third liquefied natural gas liquefaction train at its Tangguh project in Indonesia’s West Papua Province, a statement from BP Indonesia said. BP is one of Indonesia’s largest foreign investors and holds a 37.16 percent stake in the Tangguh plant, which began operations in mid-2009.
JAPAN
Data suggest fiscal rebound
Companies increased capital spending more than economists predicted in the three months to September, indicating a contraction in the world’s third-largest economy may be short-lived. Capital spending excluding software rose 2.4 percent in the period from a year earlier, after rising 6.6 percent in the previous quarter, the Ministry of Finance said yesterday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast a 1 percent gain. Companies in the transport equipment, food and chemicals industries contributed to the advance in capital expenditure in the quarter, the ministry said after the data were released.
UNITED KINGDOM
Manufacturing in slump
Manufacturers reported stagnant output over the past quarter, the weakest reading since late 2009 when the country was recovering from its deepest recession in more than 50 years, a survey by the sector’s lobby, EEF, showed yesterday. Boding ill for the coming months, orders hardly grew, with the relevant balance of responses falling to the lowest level since early 2010. Demand at home remained weak, while a protracted debt crisis in the eurozone led to the first fall in export orders since the end of 2009, EEF said. EEF forecast that manufacturing output would contract by 1.2 percent this year and grow by 0.7 percent next year. EEF polled 391 companies between Nov. 2 and Nov. 23.
AUSTRALIA
Mining firms lead profit fall
Business profits dropped in the three months through September, the fourth consecutive quarterly decline, as earnings weakened at mining companies. Gross operating profits fell 2.9 percent from the second quarter, when they declined a revised 0.3 percent, the Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. The result compares with the median forecast of a 3 percent drop in a Bloomberg survey of 20 economists. Inventories swelled 1.1 percent, compared with analysts’ prediction of a 0.4 percent gain. Reserve Bank of Australia will likely lower the nation’s benchmark interest rate to 3 percent today, most economists surveyed by Bloomberg News have predicted.
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