GERMANY
Business confidence falls
Business confidence this month fell to its lowest level in four months as the outlook for Europe’s biggest economy clouds over, the Ifo economic institute said yesterday. Ifo’s business climate index fell to 107.4 points this month from 108.5 points last month. That is the lowest level since February and the second month in a row that the index has fallen. Analysts had been expecting a much shallower decline.
AUSTRALIA
IMF encourages rate cut
The Reserve Bank of Australia should be prepared to cut interest rates further if the nation’s economic recovery fails to meet expectations and risks to financial stability remain contained, the IMF said yesterday. “We think interest rates where they are today are broadly appropriate, however we’re implicitly suggesting an easing bias,” IMF Australian mission head James Daniel told reporters in Sydney. “We see the risks to growth as somewhat tilted to the downside.” The central bank cut rates to a record-low 2 percent last month to try to support a transition away from waning mining investment.
MANUFACTURING
US durable orders drop
New orders for US manufactured durable goods fell last month, pulled lower by slumping aircraft orders, the US Department of Commerce reported on Tuesday. Orders fell 1.8 percent, widely exceeding analysts’ average estimate of a 0.5 percent decline. The decrease, the third in the last four months, followed a downwardly revised 1.5 percent decline in April. Transportation equipment orders also fell for the third time in four months, down by 6.4 percent, including a 35.3 percent plunge in civilian aircraft orders and a 6.3 percent decline in defense aircraft. Orders for motor vehicles were flat.
LABOR
IKEA US raising wages
IKEA’s US division is raising the minimum wage for the second year in a row as the Swedish ready-to-assemble furniture chain looks to improve its relations with workers and reduce worker turnover. Starting on Jan. 1, IKEA’s average minimum hourly wage will increase to US$11.87, which is US$4.62 above the current US federal wage and marks a US$1.11 increase, or 10 percent, from this year’s average minimum pay. The increase will affect 32 percent of IKEA’s 10,500 store workers and will raise the average hourly wage from US$14.19 to US$15.45. The increase also covers workers in some distribution centers.
TELECOMS
BlackBerry Q1 disappoints
BlackBerry Ltd reported worse-than-expected first-quarter financial results as phone sales continued their long slide, but software revenue increased as the firm turns its focus away from hardware. The Canadian company said it lost US$0.10 per share. After adjustments it lost US$0.05 per share. Revenue fell about 32 percent to US$658 million. The results fell short of Wall Street expectations, with the average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expecting a loss of US$0.04 per share. Eleven analysts surveyed by Zacks expected US$684.5 million in revenue.
RETAIL
Merger announced
Dutch retail giant Royal Ahold NV and its Belgian rival Delhaize Group yesterday announced they will merge by the middle of next year. The deal will create one of the world’s largest retail firms with a turnover of more than 54 billion euros (US$61 billion).
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day