FOREIGN EXCHANGE
Seoul probing banks
South Korea’s antitrust watchdog yesterday said it has opened an investigation to see whether alleged foreign-exchange market rigging by six global banks fined in a US and Europe foreign-exchange probe hurt local firms. South Korean Fair Trade Commission Chairman Jeong Jae-chan told a legislative hearing that JPMorgan Chase & Co and five other international lenders have been under investigation. He provided no further details, but South Korean newspapers said the six banks under investigation included Barclays PLC, Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Scotland PLC and UBS AG.
JAPAN
Trade deficit narrows
The nation’s trade deficit narrowed sharply last month from a year earlier, reflecting lower costs for imported oil and gas, but exports also slowed as demand softened in China. The Ministry of Finance yesterday said that the deficit last month was ¥216 billion (US$1.7 billion), compared with ¥917.2 billion a year earlier, but exceeding the ¥55.8 billion deficit in April. Exports rose 2.4 percent to ¥5.74 trillion, while imports sank 8.7 percent to ¥6 trillion.
CHINA
Auto group urges cooperation
China’s automakers are vulnerable to price competition initiated by foreign brands, which have stepped up their discounting to win back market share, according to the head of the country’s state-backed auto group. The discounting would hit local brands in the coming months, Chinese Association of Automobile Manufacturers secretary-general Dong Yang (董揚) wrote in a posting on the group’s Web site. There are too many domestic car brands in China and automakers should stop expanding their capacity and seek to combine their operations instead, he said.
UNITED STATES
New housing slows
Builders broke ground on fewer homes last month, although the pace of construction is significantly higher than a year ago. The Department of Commerce on Tuesday said that housing starts last month fell 11.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.04 million homes. Still, housing starts have increased 6 percent year-to-date, aided by the spillover effects of strong job growth and relatively low mortgage rates. Meanwhile, approved building permits increased 11.8 percent to an annual rate of 1.28 million last month, the highest level since August 2007.
E-COMMERCE
Ebay unit nears sale
EBay Inc plans to select a buyer for its enterprise division by July 1, when the e-commerce company plans to officially split off its PayPal division, people familiar with the matter said. Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners is one of the remaining bidders, said the people, who asked not to be named because the negotiations are private. A sale could value the unit between US$1 billion and US$1.5 billion, the people said.
ACQUISITIONS
Blackstone, Carlyle eye NCR
Private equity firms Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group LP are making a joint bid for NCR Corp, which manufactures cash registers and ATMs, in a leveraged buyout that would be the year’s biggest at more than US$10 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The auction for Duluth, Georgia-based NCR is several weeks away from completion, the people said.
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],”