AUTOMAKERS
Tesla touts US sourcing
Tesla Motors Inc, the electric vehicle maker co-founded by Elon Musk, plans to source all the raw materials for its proposed US$5 billion US battery factory in North America. The Silicon Valley company would not look overseas for the graphite, cobalt and other materials needed for its so-called Gigafactory, Telsa spokeswoman Liz Jarvis-Shean said. The move comes amid heightened interest in curbing graphite pollution and a widespread corporate sensitivity about avoiding the use of industrial minerals from troubled parts of the world.
BANKING
Cyprus ends cash controls
Cyprus scrapped all limits on daily cash withdrawals from banks on Friday in a significant loosening of capital controls that were imposed following the country’s painful financial rescue deal a year ago. The easing of restrictions comes with the steady bolstering of confidence and stability in the banking system, the finance ministry said. Before Friday’s decree, the daily withdrawal limits were 300 euros (US$413) for individuals and 500 euros for companies. The decree also increases the amount of money that a person can move within Cyprus to 50,000 euros from 20,000 euros. The amount for companies was doubled to 200,000 euros. It also lifts a ban on accessing money in existing fixed term deposits before their maturity date. To encourage people who had pulled their money out of banks in the rescue’s aftermath to deposit with banks again, the decree allows people to open new accounts in any bank.
FINANCE
Target’s debt rating cut
Target Corp, the second-largest US discount retailer, had its debt rating cut by Standard & Poor’s after a hacker attack and sluggish performance at its Canadian unit hit fourth-quarter profit. The rating was dropped one level from “A+” to “A,” the sixth-highest investment grade, S&P said on Friday in a statement. The ratings firm has a stable outlook on Target, which ranks second to Wal-Mart Stores Inc in the discount-retail industry. The retail chain suffered a data breach at the height of the holiday season last year, allowing hackers to steal card data and personal information from millions of shoppers. Even as chief executive officer Gregg Steinhafel worked to reassure customers, the attack took a toll on fourth-quarter results, contributing to a 46 percent drop in net income.
ECONOMY
US consumer spending rises
US consumers stepped up spending a bit last month as incomes increased for a second straight month, offering hope the economy was regaining its footing after being slammed by an unusually cold winter. The data from the US Commerce Department on Friday took the sting out of a separate report that showed consumer sentiment dipped this month. Economists said they expected household morale to perk up with warmer weather in the spring. Consumer spending rose 0.3 percent last month after a downwardly revised gain of 0.2 percent in January. Separately, the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index dipped to 80.0 in March from 81.6 in February. It was little changed from a preliminary reading earlier this month.
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],”
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
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