CHINA
Prices rose 2% last month
Consumer prices rose 2 percent last month on-year, official data showed yesterday, inflation slipping to a four-month low and remaining well below the government’s annual target. The consumer price index also rose by 2.2 percent in the first eight months of the year from the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. The figures fall well short of the 3.5 percent annual target set by the government in March. Overall food prices drove inflation, rising 3 percent from the same month last year, according to the bureau’s data, with double-digit increases in costs for fresh fruit and eggs.
AVIATION
Ex-Im Bank may help Airbus
The US Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) would provide financing for exports of Airbus Group jetliners, provided they are assembled in the US with sufficient content from US suppliers, president Fred Hochberg said on Wednesday. “We’re about US jobs,” he said. The bank, which supports loans for US manufacturers selling products to foreign firms, is at the center of a bruising battle over whether Congress should renew its authority to operate, which expires on Sept. 30. About 46 percent of the bank’s total financial exposure is for jetliners made by Boeing, US Government Accountability Office figures show. Airbus is setting up a factory in Mobile, Alabama, to make commercial jets. While Airbus intends to sell the planes to US airlines, there would be no restriction against US export credit support for foreign airlines buying US-made Airbus planes, Hochberg said.
INVESTMENT
Chiquita to open books
Not a month after flatly rejecting a takeover bid by two Brazilian companies, Chiquita Brands International Inc is softening its stance and will open its books to them. Should Chiquita see eye-to-eye with the investment firm Safra Group and Cutrale Group, a juice company, it could scuttle a tie up with the Irish fruit company Fyffes. Chiquita did not elaborate on Wednesday on why it has now signed a confidentiality agreement with the Brazilian group, but it has been pressured to do so by two proxy advisory firms. There has also been pushback on a national level against the type of deal Chiquita is trying to arrange with Fyffes, which would move Chiquita’s headquarters to Dublin and lower its US tax rate.
INTERNET
Hangouts calls available
Google Inc on Wednesday began letting people use its Hangouts message application for mobile devices to make free or low-cost voice calls over the Internet. Google is essentially merging capabilities of its Voice online calling service with Hangouts, which became a hit feature in the technology titan’s Google+ social network because of its free group video chat capabilities. Calls are free between Hangouts users and to numbers in the US or Canada, according to Google’s product manager Amit Fulay, who described international call rates as “really low.”
BONDS
Twitter plans sale
Twitter Inc is tapping debt markets for the first time, with plans to raise as much as US$1.5 billion to invest in acquisitions and expansion. The San Francisco-based company is selling the convertible bonds in two US$650 million pieces, one maturing in five years and one coming due in seven years, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday. The offering size may rise to US$1.5 billion if the banks involved exercise an overallotment option.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”