AUTOMAKERS
EU car sales continue to rise
European car sales rose a 20th consecutive month last month, bolstered by a reviving economy and new models from Renault SA, BMW AG and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV. Registrations increased 6.9 percent from a year earlier to 1.21 million vehicles, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said in a statement yesterday. Four-month sales jumped 8.1 percent to 4.85 million cars. The gains extend the auto market’s longest growth streak since the ACEA began compiling figures in 1990 and maintain a recovery from a two-decade low reached in 2013. The ACEA gathers figures from 27 of the 28 EU countries, as well as Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.
STOCK MARKETS
S Korea to double range
South Korea is to double the daily trading range of shares starting next month as the country seeks to boost the appeal of its US$1.3 trillion equities market. Commencing on June 15, stocks on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ indexes would be able to move 30 percent compared with the current level of 15 percent, the Korea Exchange said in an e-mailed statement. The South Korean Financial Services Commission first announced the plan in September last year, after the 200-day average trading volume of the benchmark stock gauge fell in July last year to its lowest level since 2007.
INTERNET
Jack Ma bemoans lawsuit
The founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) has defended the e-commerce giant’s stance against counterfeit goods and expressed regret over a lawsuit filed by the owner of luxury brands Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Jack Ma (馬雲) yesterday said his company cooperates with brand owners to fight counterfeiting and has a large staff of employees dedicated to that. A lawsuit filed by France’s Kering SA last week in a US court accuses Alibaba of cooperating with and profiting from sales of counterfeit goods. Speaking at a news conference in Seoul, Ma said: “We express regret about the company’s choice to sue us and not to cooperate with us to fight against counterfeit goods.” Ma complained the lawsuit was “creating internal conflict” rather than cooperation to fight a “common enemy.”
FINANCE
MasterCard complaint likely
MasterCard Inc is poised to receive an antitrust complaint from EU watchdogs probing card-payment fees, according to three people with knowledge of the case. Regulators might send a statement of objections to MasterCard before the end of July, the people said. Such filings in antitrust probes are usually a precursor for fines. EU antitrust regulators have targeted swipe fees on credit and debit cards for more than a decade, warning that the way the charges are collectively agreed on is anti-competitive.
SOUTH AFRICA
Electricity slowing growth
Power outages are the biggest brake on South Africa’s economic growth, Minister of Finance Nhlanhla Nene said on Monday, as factories, homes and offices across the country continue to suffer from long electricity cuts. South Africa is forecast to grow at 2 percent this year, far below the rate needed to ease high unemployment and growing frustration among many young blacks more than two decades after the end of apartheid. Nene also said the country’s electricity shortages were due to “inadequate maintenance of the power plants and distribution networks resulting in deteriorating and unreliable performance.”
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