RETAIL
Slow year of US growth
US retail sales fell last month to cap the slowest year of growth since 2009, amid persistent downward pressure on prices, the US Commerce Department said on Friday. Retail and food service sales fell 0.1 percent in the month, trimming strong gains in November, and for the year showed just 2.1 percent growth. Meanwhile, in another sign of persistent growth weakness, the Labor Department’s producer price index fell 0.2 percent last month, for a 12 month fall of 1.0 percent, compared to a 0.9 percent increase in 2014.
CAPITAL MARKETS
Iceland’s credit bumped up
Standard & Poor’s on Friday said that it bumped up Iceland’s credit rating by one notch to “BBB+,” citing progress over the easing of capital controls imposed during the 2008 banking crisis. The current rating remains six notches below the highest ever assigned to Iceland by S&P — the second best “AA+” grade — between 1996 and 2006. Fitch Ratings agency on Friday maintained its rating for Iceland at “BBB+.”
CAPITAL MARKETS
Poland blasts credit cut
Standard & Poor’s cut its long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating for Poland on Friday by one notch to “BBB+,” citing government moves “weakening institutions.” The Polish Ministry of Finance blasted S&P’s downgrade as “incomprehensible,” saying in a statement that the ratings agency’s decision “is contradictory to assessments presented by other rating agencies, the biggest international financial institutions and financial market participants.”
AVIATION
BA expands employee count
British Airways (BA) on Friday said it would recruit nearly 2,000 pilots and cabin crew this year, its largest ever intake in a single year. The move would take the number of its flying crew to over 20,000 for the first time in the history of the company. Over 350 of the new recruits are to be pilots and 1,600 are to be cabin crew. The airline is set to serve 13 new routes from London this year, notably to South American destinations including Lima in Peru and San Jose in Costa Rica.
UTILITIES
EDF to discard 4,000 jobs
French electricity firm EDF plans to shed at least 4,000 jobs, or nearly 6 percent of its staff, over the next three years without forced layoffs, union sources said on Friday. The reduction is double the amount state-controlled EDF has previously announced. The issue was due to be discussed by EDF management and unions at a meeting on Thursday, with most reductions expected to be made by not replacing staff departing or retiring. Three unions have called for a strike to protest against the job cuts.
BANKING
Banks lift reserves
Earnings from US banking giants Citigroup Inc and Wells Fargo and Co on Friday showed an increased drag from the oil rout that investors fear could worsen. Both banks lifted their reserves in case of defaults from energy companies, a sign of how months of low oil prices have pinched clients in the petroleum business. Citigroup reported last year’s fourth-quarter earnings of US$3.3 billion, nearly 10 times the level in the year-ago period, while Wells Fargo reported flat fourth-quarter earnings of US$5.7 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