GERMANY
Consumer confidence up
Consumer confidence will continue to pick up next month as an improving economic outlook and stable labor market encourage household spending, Gfk SE said yesterday. The Nuremberg-based market research company forecast that its consumer-sentiment index, based on a survey of about 2,000 people, would increase to 5.9 next month after rising to 5.8 in February. “German consumers anticipate that the economy will steadily improve in the coming months,” GfK said in an e-mailed statement. “It currently seems that the turning point in economic prospects has been reached.” A measure of economic expectations improved to minus-2.5 this month from minus-11.3 last month, approaching its long-term average of zero, GfK said. An index measuring willingness to buy rose to 37 from 35.3, while a gauge of income expectations eased to 31.8 from 36.
SOUTH KOREA
Current account in surplus
The nation posted a current account surplus of US$2.25 billion for last month on robust exports of mobile devices, autos and petrochemical products, the central bank said yesterday. The current account — the broadest measure of a country’s trade with the rest of the world, including investment returns — has been in the black for 12 straight months, including a revised US$2.14 billion surplus in December last year. Exports last month stood at US$45.7 billion, up 10.9 percent from a year earlier and 1.8 percent from US$44.9 billion in December. They were bolstered by increased shipments of flagship export goods such as mobile devices and cars. Imports last month also rose to US$45.2 billion compared with US$43 billion in December and US$43.5 billion a year ago. The services account, which covers non-goods trade such as travel and other services, posted a deficit of US$930 million on losses in the transport services industry.
BANKING
JPMorgan to lay off 19,000
JPMorgan Chase & Co, the biggest US bank, will eliminate as many as 19,000 jobs in mortgages and community banking through next year, as CEO Jamie Dimon trims expenses. The lender, which had about 259,000 employees at the end of December last year, will cut 13,000 to 15,000 jobs in its mortgage unit and 3,000 to 4,000 in community banking excluding home lending through the end of next year, the company said on its Web site. Companywide headcount will shrink by about 4,000 people this year, mainly through attrition, while some employees will be redeployed to other areas, spokeswoman Kristin Lemkau said.
RETAIL
Home Depot beats forecasts
Home Depot Inc on Tuesday reported better-than-expected earnings, helped by a nascent recovery in the US housing market and rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Net earnings rose to US$1 billion, or US$0.68 a share in the fourth quarter, from US$774 million, or US$0.50 a share, a year earlier. The results came on the same day the US Department of Commerce said sales of new single-family homes jumped 15.6 percent to a four-and-a-half-year high last month, raising hopes that the US housing market was recovering.The world’s largest home improvement chain also forecast higher sales and earnings per share for the current fiscal year, which analysts thought might even be conservative. It said it expected sales to rise about 2 percent and sales at stores open at least 12 months to increase about 3 percent this fiscal year.
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