MEDIA
US investigated paper
The US Department of Justice last year opened an investigation into allegations that employees at the Wall Street Journal’s China news bureau bribed Chinese officials for information, the newspaper reported on Sunday. According to the paper, the Department of Justice approached News Corp’s outside counsel early last year and said it had received information from a person it described as a whistleblower, who claimed one or more Journal employees had provided gifts to Chinese government officials in exchange for information. However, News Corp told the department that company officials suspected the informant was an agent of the Chinese government, seeking to disrupt the paper’s work and possibly retaliate against the Journal for its reporting on China’s leadership, the report said.
BANKING
Lending growth declines
Cross-border lending saw its smallest growth in 13 years in the third quarter of last year, according to a report published on Sunday by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Between June and September last year, the cross-border lending of banks that report to BIS rose by just US$33 billion, or 0.1 percent, from the previous quarter. The BIS, which is sometimes dubbed the central bank of central banks, explained in its quarterly report that the modest increase was driven by lending to non-banks, especially in US dollars, British pounds and non-major currencies, which rose by US$153 billion, or 1.4 percent. That positive development was however countered by a fall of US$120 billion, or 0.7 percent, in cross-border lending to banks.
ELECTRONICS
Firms to split up venture
STMicroelectronics NV and Ericsson AB agreed to split up their unprofitable ST-Ericsson chip venture after failing to find a buyer for the business. Ericsson plans to take on about 1,800 of the venture’s employees and contractors in countries including Sweden and Germany, and is to continue developing ST-Ericsson’s modem technology, according to a statement from the companies yesterday. STMicroelectronics is to take on the venture’s existing products and 950 employees, mainly in France and in Italy, and incur costs of as much as US$450 million.
TELECOMS
Tycoon welcomes reforms
Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim, whose wealth has taken a knock since the government yesterday unveiled a reform bill to overhaul the industry he dominates, said on Sunday he welcomed the plan as a boon for competition. Hailed as the biggest shake-up of Mexico’s phone and television market in decades, the bill aims to boost foreign competition and give regulators the power to force firms to sell assets if they have more than 50 percent of the market. Slim, the world’s richest man, controls about 80 percent of Mexico’s fixed line business and 70 percent of the mobile market through his phone company America Movil.
INDUSTRY
Coal India shares slump
Coal India shares slumped about 6 percent yesterday after a report said the government planned to “speed up” a stake selling in the world’s largest miner to reduce the country’s deficit. “The government is quickly pushing ahead [with] a blockbuster share sale” of 10 percent in a bid to raise 200 billion rupees (US$3.7 billion), the Economic Times newspaper said, without citing sources.
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
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