JAPAN
SMEs expanding abroad
Small and medium-sized enterprises are boosting borrowing to expand abroad as opportunities at home dry up, according to the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). The number of loans and investments by JBIC for small and medium-sized companies for operations abroad jumped to 82 in the nine months through December last year, with a total value of ¥105 billion (US$880 million), according to the Tokyo-based institution. That compares with 54 worth ¥18 billion in the fiscal year through March last year. Data for the last three months is not yet available.
FINANCE
UBS executive pleads guilty
Former UBS AG executive Hansruedi Schumacher pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the US as part of the government’s prosecution of financial industry officials who help Americans dodge taxes. Schumacher, 56, entered his plea on Thursday in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida. Schumacher, who also worked at Neue Zuercher Bank and once ran the cross-border business for UBS, was indicted in August 2009 on a charge of helping US citizens evade taxes on UBS and NZB accounts.
ENERGY
Marine terminal canceled
Pipeline builder TransCanada on Thursday announced it would not build a marine terminal at Cacouna, Quebec, saying increased tanker traffic in the region would have harmed a pod of beluga whales. The terminal, 200km northeast of Quebec City, was to be the end point of the Energy East pipeline, which was originally due to move 1.1 million barrels of oil per day starting in 2018 from the Alberta oil sands and Saskatchewan shale oil fields in western Canada for shipping overseas. The arctic white whale, with its distinctive spherical forehead and smiling mouth, is present in and around Cacouna.
AUTOMAKERS
Self-driving cars planned
Nissan Motor Co chief executive Carlos Ghosn wants to put self-driving cars on Japan’s roads next year and says they would be able to navigate busy urban environments on their own by 2020. “There will be a Nissan product in Japan, which will carry autonomous drive,” he told reporters on Thursday at the New York International Auto Show. A five-year tieup with NASA on the technology would see the initial rollout by December next year. In 2018, models should have the ability to avoid hazards and to change lanes, and by 2020 vehicles should be able to autonomously maneuver through crowded city roads.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Pfizer halts PRC vaccines
Pfizer Inc is ceasing its vaccine commercial operations in China after the government failed to renew its license for a key shot for children, the latest sign of the uncertainties facing international drugmakers in the nation. The Chinese import license for the Prevenar-brand vaccine expired last year, the US pharmaceutical company said on Thursday. It expects a shortage of the product in China before the launch of a newer version, called Prevenar 13, that it already sells in other parts of the world. At least 34 applications from foreign multinationals have been or are set to be delayed after Chinese regulators began requiring an added procedure, according to an industry 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
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],”
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
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