TRADE
WTO rules against India
The WTO on Thursday upheld a ruling that India is unfairly blocking imports of US poultry and eggs. US President Barack Obama’s administration said the decision is a major victory that should greatly expand export opportunities for US farmers. India imposed the trade barriers in 2007 to prevent avian influenza from entering the country. The WTO said they were too restrictive and not based on international scientific standards.
STOCKS
UK to sell Royal Mail stake
Britain is to start selling its remaining 30 percent stake in postal operator Royal Mail PLC, which is worth about £1.5 billion (US$2.3 billion), as part of a drive to fix the budget deficit, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said on Thursday. No decision has yet been taken on whether the shares would be sold privately to investors or offered to the public, a British Treasury official said. Britain sold a 60 percent stake in Royal Mail in 2013. The sale of further Royal Mail shares is set to begin this year, the Treasury said.
MACROECONOMICS
Russian offical pessimistic
Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday it was too early to say the crisis is over in Russia after the economy was hit by Western sanctions and falling oil prices. Her statement runs contrary to the optimism demonstrated by the Russian authorities who have said numerous times that the worst was over. Russia’s economy contracted by 1.9 percent in the first quarter of the year, the first contraction since 2009.
INTERNET
Facebook ‘Lite’ released
Facebook Inc on Thursday released a “Lite” version of its application that was tailored for people using Android smartphones in places where wireless data bandwidth is scarce. Facebook Lite was built to use less data and work well despite potentially constrained telecommunications network conditions in developing countries, according to the California-based online social network. The company began rolling Lite out in Asia and said that the application would be available in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America in coming weeks.
RETAIL
Tesco mulls S Korea selloff
Tesco PLC is considering a sale of its South Korean business that could fetch more than US$5 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said. The UK company is weighing options including a sale or initial public offering of Homeplus, one of the people said. Tesco is working with advisers including HSBC Holdings PLC on the process, the people said, adding that no final decision has been made on how to proceed.
MINING
Fortesque to sell assets
Billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group Ltd has held talks with Baosteel Group Corp (寶鋼集團) and Japanese firms about the sale of stakes in some of its mines, people with knowledge of the matter said. The iron ore producer, which has a market value of US$5.6 billion, has spoken with about 10 potential Asian investors, according to the people. It is considering selling as much as a 20 percent holding in some assets, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private.
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