FINANCE
JPMorgan offers to settle
JPMorgan Chase has offered to pay about US$3 billion to settle an array of pending probes by the US Department of Justice, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the discussions. The department said JPMorgan would need to pay billions above the US$3 billion offer to settle the cases, the person said. The newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, said that JPMorgan, the biggest US bank by assets, and the justice department had expanded the settlement talks to include an array of cases. It said it was unclear which of the more than half a dozen open investigations by the department into JPMorgan’s conduct would be resolved by such an agreement.
UNITED STATES
Lew warns on default
US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Tuesday branded as unacceptable tactics by Congressional Republicans that could force the government to default on its obligations as soon as next month. Lew warned anew at the Bloomberg Markets Top 50 Summit in New York that without increasing the Treasury’s borrowing ability by the middle of next month, it could be left with only a relative small amount of cash and looming large payment commitments. “It is uncharted territory,” he said. “There is no plan after we run out of borrowing authority that will give us the ability to meet all the obligations of the United States.” He added that “it is not a line which you cross.”
GERMANY
Consumer confidence rises
Consumer confidence in Germany is rising as economic expectations continue to point upwards in Europe’s top economy, a new poll found yesterday. “German consumers expect the economy to gather pace in the coming months, as is seen in the clear upwards trend in economic expectations,” market research company GfK said in a statement. “Their urge to spend appears to be unbroken.” Overall, GfK’s headline household confidence index was forecast to rise to 7.1 points next month from 7 points this month, it said. The outlook for Europe’s top economy is currently positive, it added.
FOOD
Smithfield okays takeover
Shuanghui International (雙匯國際) won the largest-ever Chinese takeover of a US company on Tuesday when shareholders of pork giant Smithfield Foods approved its US$7.1 billion offer. The deal locks in for Shuanghui and the giant Chinese market a strong supply from the world’s largest pig raiser and pork processor. Smithfield said the deal received 96 percent of the votes cast at a special shareholders’ meeting, despite an earlier challenge by a key investor arguing that it undervalued Smithfield. The deal had to clear a number of hurdles, including questions from US politicians and a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US.
VIETNAM
GDP up in first nine months
Vietnam’s economic growth picked up slightly in the first nine months of the year, official figures showed yesterday, but experts warned that it could still miss its full-year growth target of about 5.5 percent. GDP grew 5.14 percent in the first three quarters of the year, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Planning and Investment, compared with 4.73 percent for the same period last year. This year’s growth rate is “moderate, within control and acceptable,” said independent analyst Cao Sy Kiem, a former governor of Vietnam’s central bank.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained