ELECTRONICS
Sony to close US stores
Sony Corp says it is closing about two-thirds of its US Sony Stores as part of a wide-ranging company restructuring it announced earlier this month. It also said that 1,000 of the previously announced 5,000 job cuts would come from its Sony Electronics unit, mainly in the US and Mexico. The cuts are to take place before March next year.
MINING
Vale’s profits plummet 89%
Profits at the world’s top iron ore producer, Brazilian mining giant Vale, dived 89.2 percent to US$584 million last year, the firm said on Wednesday. The company also posted a net loss that more than doubled in the fourth quarter of last year from the previous year, from US$2.615 billion to US$6.451 billion. Vale reported record production of iron ore, copper ore, copper, gold and coal, but it said profit was hit hard by a series of “non-recurring events,” including increased costs and currency woes.
BANKING
RBS posts US$15bn loss
Britain’s state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) plunged into a near £9 billion (US$15 billion) loss last year on vast charges for litigation and the creation of a “bad bank” division, it said yesterday. The lender, which is 81 percent owned by the government after a huge bailout during the global financial crisis, added it would seek to slash its cost base by another £5.3 billion in the coming years and warned of more “inevitable” job cuts.
UNITED KINGDOM
Minimum wage hike advised
The minimum wage could rise by 3 percent to £6.50 (US$10.802) an hour following recommendations from the government’s adviser on low pay, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills Vince Cable said on Wednesday. Cable said the Low Pay Commission’s figure would be the first inflation-busting rise since 2008, if accepted by the government. However, the proposed hike from its current level of £6.31 falls short of Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s recent suggestions that it could climb to £7.00.
FRANCE
Unemployed at record high
The number of unemployed in France jumped to a new record on Wednesday, to 3.31 million people registered last month, prompting the government to pledge anew that it would buck the trend this year after failing to do so last year. The number of new jobseekers rose by 8,900, the labor ministry said. If those holding part-time employment were taken into account the number of unemployed rose to 4.92 million, another record.
BRAZIL
Key interest rate raised
The central bank raised its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 10.75 percent on Wednesday, as Latin America’s largest economy pursues an aggressive drive to curb inflation. The central bank’s monetary policy commission said the decision was unanimous and “continues the process of adjustment” begun last April, when the rate stood at 7.25 percent.
SOUTH KOREA
Current account shrinks
The country’s current account surplus narrowed to an 11-month low last month, the central bank said on Thursday. The surplus stood at US$3.61 billion, down from US$6.41 billion in December last year, the Bank of Korea said. The current account is the broadest measure of a country’s trade both in goods and services.
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