SECURITIES
Central banks buy US debt
Overseas central banks are piling into US Treasuries in the face of the longest market rout this year. Foreign official accounts raised their holdings of US securities in custody at the Federal Reserve to US$2.99 trillion as of Wednesday, the highest level this year, based on Fed data. The purchases came amid a selloff that pushed US 10-year yields to a six-month high of 2.36 percent this week. US 10-year yields of 2.21 percent as of 6:42am in London was 92 basis points more than the average of the other G7 nations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The benchmark Treasury yield has risen 58 basis points from this year’s low in January.
SHIPPING
Port privatization relaunched
Greece’s new left-wing government has relaunched the process of privatizing the nation’s largest port, but is offering a reduced stake to bidders, a source close to the deal said on Thursday. The previous conservative government had planned to sell a 67 percent stake in the Piraeus port, but this has now been reduced to 51 percent, the source said. The unnamed source said three companies were interested in the port privatization offer: the Chinese conglomerate COSCO Group (中國海運集團), the Dutch company APM Terminals and the Philippines’ International Container Terminal Services. The companies have until September to submit their offer, the source added.
BREWERIES
SAB to buy Meantime
SABMiller said it would acquire British craft beer firm Meantime Brewing Co, giving the maker of big-name brands such as Peroni and Grolsh, exposure to the fastest-growing part of the British beer market. SAB said it planned to grow the sales of Greenwich, London-based Meantime’s beers across Britain and would also look to export it in other European markets. The financial terms of the deal were not being disclosed, SAB said, adding that the acquisition would be completed early next month. Meantime’s beers include London Pale Ale and London Lager.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Aspen targets baby food
Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd, Africa’s largest generic-drug maker, is in talks to buy a baby-food business to add to the company’s nutrition unit two years after it bought licenses to sell Nestle SA’s infant formula, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement on Thursday. Aspen, which supplies medicines in more than 150 countries, has spent in excess of US$2 billion on acquisitions in the past two years and has identified opportunities for further deals, the company said in March. The company said on Monday it had agreed to sell a pharmaceutical business to Dublin-based Endo International PLC for 1.6 billion rand (US$135 million).
BANKING
Chinese lender to buy BBM
Bank of Communications Co (交通銀行), China’s fifth-largest bank, is nearing an agreement to purchase control of Brazilian lender Banco BBM SA for about US$200 million, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Chinese lender plans to acquire about 80 percent of the bank, while BBM’s founding Mariani family will keep the remaining stake, according to the people. The deal could be announced as soon as next week, during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s (李克強) visit to Brazil, the people said. BBM had a book value of 575.6 million reais (US$192 million) at the end of December.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by