PHARMACEUTICALS
GSK fined for bribery
A Chinese court yesterday fined British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 3 billion yuan (US$490 million) following a nearly year-long bribery probe, the company said. The fine, levied by the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court after a closed hearing in Hunan Province, was the largest ever handed down by a Chinese court, Xinhua news agency said. Chinese authorities had accused GSK employees of bribing hospitals, doctors and health institutions to gain billions of dollars in illegal revenue. The Changsha court also sentenced British national Mark Reilly, the former head of GSK’s China operations, and an unstated number of other company officials to between two to four years in prison.
MACROECONOMICS
Italy GDP to shrink 0.1%
Italy’s government must overhaul its labor market to kick-start its economy, which is set to shrink for the third year running this year, the IMF said on Thursday. GDP is expected to contract 0.1 percent, the Washington-based fund said in a report, cutting its previous forecast that Italy’s economy would expand by 0.3 percent. Unemployment is set to average a record 12.6 percent, the IMF predicted.
MONETARY
S Africa bank chief quitting
South African Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus on Thursday announced that she would not stay in the job after her term expires in November. Marcus, 65, became the bank’s first female governor in late 2009, guiding Africa’s most developed economy out of a recession in the wake of the global economic meltdown. South African President Jacob Zuma’s government said that a replacement would be named “in due course.”
SOFTWARE
SAP to acquire Concur
German business software maker SAP said it would buy travel and expense management software company Concur Technologies for US$129 per share, or about US$7.36 billion. That represents a premium of 19.7 percent to Concur’s closing price on Thursday. SAP values the deal at US$8.3 billion. It said the acquisition should close in the fourth quarter of this year or the first quarter of next year, assuming Concur shareholders approve the sale. SAP says Concur has 25 million users in 150 countries.
AIRLINES
JetBlue to see CEO change
JetBlue Airways Corp CEO Dave Barger is to step down in February and be replaced by the company’s president after months of speculation about leadership at the airline, which is profitable, but has lagged its rivals. Barger has been CEO since 2007. The new CEO, just the third in JetBlue’s 14-year history, will be Robin Hayes, a 48-year-old former British Airways executive who joined JetBlue in 2008. Hayes will take over on Feb. 16, after Barger’s contract expires.
REAL ESTATE
Puerto Rico plans project
Puerto Rico’s government has announced the construction of a US$108 million real-estate development project as the island tries to emerge from a nearly decade-long economic slump with help from US investors. New York real-estate developer Nicholas Prouty said on Thursday that his firm would build 252 apartments as part of the third phase of a mixed-use complex considered the largest in Puerto Rico. His Putnam Bridge Holding LLC will also build 4,645m2 of commercial space.
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