CHINA
Consumer inflation drops
Consumer inflation fell last month, official figures showed yesterday, underlining sagging sentiment as growth slows in the world’s second-largest economy and adding to calls for further stimulus. The country’s consumer price index — a main gauge of inflation — rose by 1.6 percent year-on-year, the National Bureau of Statistics said, less than August’s 2 percent. The producer price index, which measures the cost of goods at the factory gate, fell 5.9 percent year-on-year, matching August’s figure, which was a six-year low.
NEW ZEALAND
Wellington reports surplus
The government yesterday posted a budget surplus for the first time since 2008. The slim surplus of NZ$414 million (US$278.9 million) in the year ending June represented just 0.2 percent of the nation’s economy. Minister of Finance Bill English said the plan was to pay down public debt over time. The result was a big turnaround from four years earlier, when the government posted a deficit of NZ$18.4 billion, equal to 9 percent of the economy, following an earthquake in Christchurch that killed 185 people.
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Wells Fargo to buy GE units
Wells Fargo & Co on Tuesday agreed to buy about US$32 billion in assets from General Electric Co and take on about 3,000 employees as the industrial giant retreats from financial services. The sale includes commercial-distribution, vendor and corporate finance units from GE Capital, San Francisco-based Wells Fargo said in a statement that did not include additional terms. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year and would allow GE’s finance unit to return about US$4.2 billion of capital to its parent, GE said.
AIRLINES
Etihad, IBM sign tech deal
Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways on Tuesday said it has signed a 10-year technology services agreement worth approximately US$700 million with IBM Corp aimed at improving efficiency. The deal is to provide Etihad, one of the world’s fastest growing airlines, with access to the latest cloud-based technologies and services, a joint statement said. It includes plans for a new cloud data center in Abu Dhabi. Developed and operated by IBM, it is to be one of the most sophisticated technology facilities in the Middle East, the statement said.
BANKING
JPMorgan sees profit jump
US giant JPMorgan Chase on Tuesday reported a jump in third-quarter earnings, as a large tax gain offset weaker performance in bond trading and some other businesses. Earnings for the quarter came in at US$6.8 billion, up by 22.3 percent from the previous year. Revenue was down by 6.4 percent to US$23.54 billion. Earnings for JPMorgan translated into US$1.32 per share, US$0.05 below analyst expectations.
INTERNET
Twitter announces layoffs
Twitter Inc on Tuesday said it was cutting 8 percent of its workforce, or 336 jobs, in a restructuring of the troubled messaging platform under newly returned CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter said the layoffs are to result in between US$10 million and US$20 million in severance costs, while total restructuring expenses are estimated at between US$5 million and US$15 million. The overall costs might be lower than severance due to recovery of unvested stock awards.
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
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
Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) latest smartphones carry a version of the advanced made-in-China processor it revealed last year, results from an independent analysis showed. This underscored the Chinese company’s ability to sustain production of the controversial chip. The Pura 70 series unveiled last week sports the Kirin 9010 processor, research firm TechInsights found during a teardown of the device. This is a newer version of the Kirin 9000s, made by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) for the Mate 60 Pro, which had alarmed officials in Washington who thought a 7-nanometer chip was beyond China’s capabilities. Huawei has enjoyed a resurgence since
purpose: Tesla’s CEO sought to meet senior Chinese officials to discuss the rollout of its ‘full self-driving’ software in China and approval to transfer data they had collected Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk arrived in Beijing yesterday on an unannounced visit, where he is expected to meet senior officials to discuss the rollout of "full self-driving" (FSD) software and permission to transfer data overseas, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Chinese state media reported that he met Premier Li Qiang (李強) in Beijing, during which Li told Musk that Tesla's development in China could be regarded as a successful example of US-China economic and trade cooperation. Musk confirmed his meeting with the premier yesterday with a post on social media platform X. "Honored to meet with Premier Li