TAXATION
Nations sign bank data pact
Forty-seven countries signed up on Tuesday to automatically share bank data, including key financial centers Singapore and Switzerland, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said, in what has been touted as a major step toward cracking down on global tax evasion. Under the declaration, the 47 countries have committed to “swiftly” pass new domestic laws that will allow them to collect information on all bank accounts and automatically exchange it with other participating countries.
MINING
Indonesian mines to close
US mining giant Newmont yesterday said it would likely cease production at its Indonesian gold and copper mine next month and send most employees on leave due to controversial new rules governing the sector. Southeast Asia’s top economy introduced a ban on the export of some unprocessed minerals in January, as well as higher taxes for some commodities that can still be shipped out of the country. Copper concentrate, a major export for Newmont and its US peer Freeport McMoRan, was exempt from the ban, but the companies still faced higher taxes on shipments.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer to buy Merck unit
Germany’s Bayer has agreed to buy Merck & Co’s non-prescription medicine and consumer care business for US$14.2 billion, gaining products such as Claritin allergy pills, Coppertone sun lotion and Dr Scholl’s footcare products. Bayer said the deal would make it the leader in over-the-counter products in North and Latin America. Bayer already has a major non-prescription division.
GAMING
Nintendo posts loss
Nintendo Co sank to a loss for the fiscal year ended March as sales of its Wii U game machine continued to lag. The Japanese manufacturer of Pokemon and Super Mario games yesterday said it will return to profit for the fiscal year through March next year. Kyoto-based Nintendo recorded a ¥23.2 billion (US$229 million) loss for the last fiscal year, a reversal from a ¥7 billion profit it eked out the previous year. Annual sales fell 10 percent to ¥571.7 billion (US$5.6 billion).
ENTERTAINMENT
Disney beats forecasts
Disney on Tuesday posted second-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street forecasts, helped by the home video sales of blockbuster movies Frozen and Thor: The Dark World. Both films showed the power of buying multibillion-dollar content brands. When combined with its US$4 billion acquisition of Lucasfilm last year and the release of three more installments in the Star Wars franchise starting in December next year, Disney chief executive Bob Iger said he expects the motion-picture business to grow, fueled by international sales.
GERMANY
Industrial orders drop
Factory orders plunged unexpectedly in March as demand for capital and consumer goods slumped both domestically and abroad, particularly from other nations using the euro, and the economy ministry cautioned the crisis in Ukraine could contribute to further weakness. The ministry yesterday said that March industrial orders dropped 2.8 percent over February, the largest monthly fall since November 2012. Economists had predicted a slight rise, following an upwardly revised 0.9 percent February gain.
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