JAPAN
Tokyo bids to back recovery
The government is planning for an ¥18.6 trillion (US$181 billion) package to counter the impact of a sales-tax bump in April, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tries to sustain a recovery in the world’s third-biggest economy. The steps will include ¥5.5 trillion in fiscal spending, an official who asked not to be named said, citing government policy. The government will use tax revenue to fund the package, forgoing new bond sales, the official said. However, Kathy Matsui, chief Japan strategist for Goldman Sachs Group Inc, said Abe’s success in reviving the economy hinges on wages rising more than the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent inflation target.
FINANCE
Banking trio refuse EU deal
JPMorgan Chase & Co, HSBC Holdings PLC and Credit Agricole SA rejected an EU deal to end an antitrust probe into the rigging of Euro interbank offered rates (EURIBOR), risking higher fines and challenging the future of the bloc’s settlement process. The EU is seeking to announce two sets of settlements as soon as yesterday, with banks accused of colluding to rig the LIBOR and EURIBOR, according to a person familiar with the probe. While global fines for rate-rigging have already topped US$3.7 billion, the cost to banks may climb as they face lawsuits worldwide. An EU accord includes a finding of liability that can be used in civil cases.
GAMING
Xbox demand beating supply
Microsoft Corp said it is selling every Xbox One it can make, after introducing the new game console on Nov. 22. Sales are setting records, the Redmond, Washington-based software maker said on Tuesday in a statement, without being more specific. Users have already spent more than 50 million hours on games and entertainment, Microsoft said. “Demand is far exceeding supply in the 13 countries we’ve launched and we are sold out at retailers around the world,” Yusuf Mehdi, vice president of strategy and marketing for Xbox, said in the statement.
ELECTRONICS
Sony, Renesas to hold talks
Sony Corp is set to begin formal talks to buy a Japanese chip plant from Renesas Electronics Corp to increase production of smartphone image sensors, people with knowledge of the proposal said. Sony plans to begin due diligence next week and the companies may not reach a final agreement, the sources said. Sony and Renesas will sign a memorandum as early as next week as they initiate talks over the plant in Tsuruoka, another person with knowledge of the plans said. Sony is deciding between purchasing the Renesas plant in northern Japan and investing in its own chip factories in the south, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
RETAIL
Web shopping hits new high
Online shopping surged about 20 percent to a record on Cyber Monday as many consumers snubbed physical stores and took to the Internet to buy holiday gifts. Including shopping on personal computers and mobile devices, online retail sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving rose to almost US$2 billion, according to researcher ComScore Inc. That made it the heaviest Web-spending day ever for the fourth straight year. More than US$23.9 billion has been spent online through PCs alone since Nov. 1, an 8.4 percent gain from the same period last year, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
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