OIL
Brent hits four-year low
Crude oil prices tumbled on Friday, with Brent crude hitting a four-year low on concerns about the global economy. Brent’s November contract was trading at US$88.40 a barrel in afternoon Asian trade, down US$1.65 from the day before and at levels last seen in November 2010. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for November delivery was down US$1.92 to US$83.85, its weakest level since June 2012. Prices of both contracts have lost about a fifth of their value since hitting this year’s peaks in June.
VENEZUELA
Exxon awarded US$1.6bn
An international arbitration panel on Thursday ordered the socialist government to pay US$1.6 billion to Exxon Mobil for the seizure of a major oil project and other losses. It is the largest award yet in a backlog of costly complaints against the nation over a wave of nationalizations in the past decade. Exxon said in a statement that the decision by the World Bank’s investment dispute panel confirmed that the South American country failed to provide fair compensation for the Cerro Negro project it seized in 2007 after the company failed to enter in a partnership proposed by state-owned PDVSA.
JAPAN
Google told to cut results
A court has ordered Google Inc to delete search results linking the claimant to a crime he did not commit, the latest in a series of rulings around the world on what search engines should tell users. The Tokyo District Court this week placed a provisional order that Google delete about half of the 237 entries that appear after the plaintiff’s name is entered, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and other local media reported. The man requested the injunction in June, arguing that these search results suggest he was involved in a crime and that this constitutes a threat to his current way of life and compromises his privacy, the newspaper said.
MINING
Ex-Hanlong director charged
A former director of Chinese mining firm Hanlong (漢龍) was yesterday extradited from Hong Kong to Australia, where he appeared in court charged with 104 counts of insider trading. Australian authorities have been chasing Xiao Hui (肖輝), also known as Steven Xiao, since late 2011, when he fled the country while on bail and was declared a fugitive. Xiao appeared before the Sydney Central Local Court on the insider trading charges and was remanded in custody with the case adjourned until Nov. 26. He was not required to enter a plea with each offence carrying a maximum 10 years in jail.
PENSIONS
PGGM to cut 200 jobs
Dutch pension fund cooperative PGGM plans to cut at least 200 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce, as part of a restructuring program aimed at reducing costs by 50 million euros (US$63 million) a year by 2017. The restructuring is a response to changes in the Dutch pension market, which has struggled to lift returns and meet tighter government requirements since the financial crisis, the company said on Friday. The netherlands has some of the largest pension funds in the world, managing a total of around 1,000 billion euros in assets. As of September, PGGM managed 178 billion euros for funds which had a collective 2.5 million clients.
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