ECONOMY
Spain improving: Moody’s
Moody’s raised its rating outlook for Spain to “stable” from “negative” on Wednesday, citing signs of real improvement in the economy and government finances. Moody’s left the overall rating for Spanish debt unchanged at “Baa3” — just above junk-bond level — but the change in the outlook reduced the likelihood of another downgrade as the country works to rebound from its financial crisis. Evidence that the economy is adjusting to new market conditions and improved growth prospects for the medium term “supports Moody’s view that Spain’s public finances are on a slowly improving trend,” it said.
ECONOMY
Survey hints at US growth
A US Federal Reserve survey showed on Wednesday that the US economy continues to grow steadily, with gains in all regions and most industries. The Fed’s regular Beige Book report, which will feed into its policy meeting on Dec. 17 and Dec. 18, painted a generally good picture of the economy in the wake of October’s government shutdown. Even so, growth was described as still just “modest to moderate,” shy of the robust pace policymakers have been aiming for with their huge stimulus program.
TOBACCO
Firms move on Russia
Japan Tobacco (JT) and Philip Morris will each buy a 20 percent stake in Russian distributor Megapolis for a total of more than US$1.5 billion, as the rivals move to tap the world’s second-biggest cigarette market. JT said it would pay US$750 million for its share in the firm, plus another US$100 million tied to the distributor’s “operational performance.” US giant Philip Morris separately announced a deal with similar terms. Megapolis has a 70 percent share of Russia’s distribution market, delivering more than 260 billion cigarettes last year, JT said.
AUTOMAKERS
French connection for China
Beijing has approved a long-awaited US$1.3 billion joint venture between French automaker Renault — the last of the global top 10 automakers without production in the world’s biggest market — and China’s Dongfeng (東風), the Chinese firm said yesterday. Renault and Dongfeng will each have a 50 percent share in the new company, which will produce 150,000 multipurpose vehicles and engines per year. The two will invest a total of 7.8 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) in the joint venture, which will be based in Wuhan, Hubei Province, Dongfeng said.
ENTERTAINMENT
‘SpongeBob’ made free
SpongeBob SquarePants and other Nickelodeon children’s programs will be dubbed into Mandarin and made available to watch free online in China over the next 12 months. The deal between popular Web portal Sohu.com (搜狐) and Viacom announced yesterday is the latest to give a foreign company more access to China’s viewing market. The companies say the deal will enable an estimated 389 million Chinese online video users to access free Nickelodeon programming on Sohu’s Web site.
TECHNOLOGY
Nokia takeover gets nod
The European Commission approved on Wednesday Microsoft Corp’s nearly 5.5 billion euro takeover of the mobile phone business of Finland’s Nokia which once dominated the global industry. The acquisition does “not raise any competition concerns, in particular because there are only modest overlaps between” the two companies, the Commission said in a statement.
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