CHINA
Consumer price index rises
The consumer price index — a main gauge of inflation — rose 1.6 percent last month from a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement yesterday. It edged up from November last year’s 1.5 percent, and came in at 1.4 percent over the course of the year, well below the government’s target of “about 3 percent.” However, food prices rose at a faster pace, increasing 2.3 percent last year, with particularly steep rises in pork prices.
SWITZERLAND
Central bank expects losses
The central bank on Friday said it expected to post a loss of 23 billion Swiss francs (US$23.1 billion) for last year, hit mainly by the hefty depreciation of its foreign currency holdings. The Swiss National Bank said it had lost a full SF20 billion on its foreign currency positions, and another SF4 billion on its gold holdings. Those losses were slightly offset by a SF1 billion profit made on the bank’s Swiss franc positions, it said.
BRAZIL
Inflation hits 12-year high
Annual inflation last year hit a 12-year high at 10.67 percent, the government said on Friday, the latest sign of economic troubles in the world’s seventh largest economy. The figure — the highest since 2002 — was more than double the government’s 4.5 percent inflation target. State statistics agency Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics said consumer prices last month rose 0.96 percent month-on-month, after a 1.01 increase in November last year.
AUTOMAKERS
Ford posts record sales
Ford Motor Co is reporting record sales of about 1.1 million vehicles in China last year. The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker on Friday said that its sales last year in the country were up 3 percent from the previous year. It also set a new monthly sales record last month, selling 124,768 vehicles. That was up by 27 percent from the prior-year period.
ALCOHOL
Asahi mulling offer: report
Asahi Group Holdings Ltd is planning to make an offer for SABMiller PLC’s Peroni and Grolsch brands as soon as next week, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported yesterday. The transaction might be worth as much as ¥400 billion (US$3.4 billion), the report said. Other suitors for SABMiller’s brands include KKR & Co LP, Grupo Mahou-San Miguel and Cinven, Bloomberg reported last month.
BIOTECHNOLOGY
Thermo Fisher buys firm
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc is paying US$1.3 billion to add Affymetrix Inc to its biotechnology toolkit. The deal announced on Friday requires Thermo Fisher to pay US$14 per share in cash to take over Affymetrix, which specializes in making equipment to analyze genetic codes. Thermo Fisher is planning to complete the acquisition by the end of June.
INTERNET
Apple registers car domains
Apple Inc has registered domain names related to automobiles, adding to speculation about the company’s plans to develop a car. The iPhone maker last month registered the domain names, which include apple.car, apple.cars and apple.auto, according to domain information provider Who.is.
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