CURRENCY
Rupiah weakens
Indonesia’s rupiah weakened to the lowest level since April 2009 on speculation local companies increased dollar purchases after the currency had its best week since November last year. Government bonds fell. The rupiah advanced 0.5 percent last week as the US Federal Reserve refrained from reducing the stimulus that has spurred demand for emerging-market assets. Indonesia’s trade shortfall surged to a record US$2.3 billion in July, weighing on the current account that remained in deficit for a seventh quarter through June. Last month’s trade data will be released on Tuesday.
SOUTH KOREA
Jet fighter deal axed
The government yesterday decided against awarding a US$7.7 billion jet fighter deal to Boeing Co for 60 F-15 Silent Eagles, saying it would re-tender its largest ever defense contract. The deal was aimed at replacing the air force’s ageing fleet of F-4s and F-5s and had initially attracted bids from Boeing, US rival Lockheed Martin and the European aerospace consortium EADS. Boeing, with its offer of 60 F-15 Silent Eagles, had ended up the sole eligible candidate after proposals from the other two came in over the stated budget, and the firm was expected to be named the winner yesterday. The government’s position that the bid price should not exceed the budget approved by parliament was a major source of concern throughout the tender process.
AUTOMAKERS
Chrysler prepares for IPO
Chrysler Group is reluctantly preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) of some of its shares. The automaker is proceeding with the IPO after it failed to reach an agreement on the value of the stock with the retiree trust that owns it. The Auburn Hills, Michigan-based automaker is now majority owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA. The shares that will be sold are owned by a United Auto Workers-run trust that pays the health care costs for about 130,000 blue-collar Chrysler retirees. The trust owns a 41.5 percent stake in Chrysler. It will get all of the proceeds from the IPO if it goes forward. The trust has set the value of the stake at US$4.27 billion, while Fiat says it’s worth US$1.75 billion.
ELECTRONICS
Firms end patent battle
South Korean electronic giants Samsung and LG have agreed to end a year-long battle over display technology patents that spawned a series of lawsuits. LG Display and Samsung Display — the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 display panel manufacturers respectively — had locked horns over a number of patents for next-generation display technologies for TVs and other devices. The two firms had accused each other of stealing liquid-crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology and key engineers.
SPAIN
Recession comes to end
The nation has emerged from recession in the third quarter, with estimated economic growth of 0.1 to 0.2 percent, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said in a newspaper interview yesterday. He also forecast growth of between 0.5 and 1.0 percent next year, stronger than the government’s previous estimate, in an interview published in the Wall Street Journal. The government’s previous forecasts had tipped a 1.3 percent contraction in overall economic output this year before a return to growth of 0.5 percent next 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
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
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],”
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