ECONOMY
ECB focuses on inflation
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi said the bank must drive inflation higher quickly, and will broaden its asset-purchase program if needed to achieve that. “We will do what we must to raise inflation and inflation expectations as fast as possible, as our price stability mandate requires,” he said yesterday at a conference in Frankfurt, Germany. Shorter-term inflation expectations “have been declining to levels that I would deem excessively low,” he said.
TRANSPORTATION
Singapore curbing taxi apps
Singapore yesterday announced new rules for mobile taxi booking apps, including US-based Uber, in the latest move by governments around the world to regulate the increasingly popular services. The Land Transport Authority said the apps will have to apply for a three-yearly “certificate of registration” starting from the second quarter of next year. The apps will be barred from requiring passengers to disclose their destinations when they make bookings due to concerns some taxi drivers may try to avoid certain routes, it said.
INVESTMENT
Blackstone buys Japan unit
US private equity firm Blackstone on Thursday said that it would buy the residential real-estate arm of General Electric Co’s property unit in Japan for more than ¥190 billion (US$1.6 billion), as the country’s land prices slowly recover from an asset bubble burst. The deal will see Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia acquire the business that owns and operates more than 10,000 units in 200 properties, primarily in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka, the firm said in a statement.
OIL
Caracas ready for cuts
Venezuela is ready to cut its own oil production as a way to boost falling prices if OPEC agrees to curb output, Minister of Foreign Affairs Rafael Ramirez said on Thursday. Ramirez, who served as oil minister for 12 years until September and as longtime president of the state oil firm PDVSA, said the fair price for a barrel of oil is US$100. He said his country would make the proposal for cuts when OPEC holds talks in Vienna on November 27 for a key production meeting.
BANKING
SEC wraps up bank case
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) resolved an impasse over punishing Bank of America Corp in a mortgage-bond case, clearing the way for the lender to complete a US$16.7 billion global settlement, people familiar with the matter said. In a private meeting earlier this week, SEC commissioners voted to waive most of a set of additional sanctions that could have seriously curtailed the bank’s asset management business and ability to raise money for private companies, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the decision is not yet public. Some of the relief is conditioned on the bank’s good behavior and comes with an outside monitor, the people said.
APPAREL
Gap cuts profit forecast
Gap Inc, the biggest US apparel-focused retailer, cut its annual profit forecast as sales at its namesake brand continue to fall. Earnings per share in the year through January will be US$2.73 to US$2.78, the San Francisco-based company said in a statement on Thursday. That’s down from the company’s earlier guidance of US$2.95 to US$3.
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],”