PHARMACEUTICALS
Acorda to buy Biotie
Acorda Therapeutics Inc has agreed to buy Biotie Therapies Corp to gain experimental medicines to treat Parkinson’s disease, valuing the Finnish drugmaker at about US$363 million. Acorda will pay 0.2946 euros in cash for each Biotie share traded on NASDAQ Helsinki and 23.57 euros for each American depositary receipt, a premium of more than 90 percent in both cases, the Ardsley, New York-based company said in a statement. Biotie’s board endorsed the offer in a separate release. Acorda will obtain worldwide rights to tozadenant, which is in the last stage of tests for Parkinson’s disease. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter.
AUTOMAKERS
Renault recalling cars
Renault SA said it is recalling more than 15,000 vehicles after an investigation showed their pollution filtering systems need adjustment. The filtering system on the vehicles does not work at very hot temperatures or below 17?C, French Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy Segolene Royal said yesterday in an interview with RTL Radio. Making the filters operational at those temperatures will take about a half a day per engine, the minister said. The carmaker has come under pressure after it revealed on Thursday last week that its offices in France were searched by government fraud investigators as part of a probe into vehicle emissions.
MACROECONOMICS
German prices rose 0.3%
Consumer prices in Germany rose by 0.3 percent last month, bringing the average inflation rate for the year as a whole also to 0.3 percent, official data showed yesterday. The national inflation yardstick had edged up by 0.4 percent in November last year. Using the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices — the barometer used by the European Central Bank — the German inflation rate stood at 0.2 percent for last month alone and 0.1 percent for the whole of last year, the German federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.
IRAN
Asset transfers a success
Central Bank of Iran Governor Valiollah Seif says the bank has successfully transferred some of its formerly frozen assets in order to ensure that financial sanctions have been fully lifted in accordance with a historic nuclear deal. State TV yesterday quoted Seif as saying the government has transferred assets from banks in Japan and South Korea to banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates. He did not provide the amount of the transfers. Seif says the lifting of sanctions, which took place over the weekend after the UN verified Tehran’s compliance with the nuclear deal, would give the nation access to US$32 billion in overseas assets. President Hassan Rouhani yesterday said the nation should redouble efforts to attract foreign investment and liberalize its economy.
ENERGY
CNOOC to cut spending
China National Offshore Oil Corp Ltd, (CNOOC, 中國海洋石油) plans to cut spending and reduce production this year amid oil’s plunge below US$30 a barrel. CNOOC shares yesterday closed up 4 percent in Hong Kong to HK$7.01. The stock dropped 23 percent last year, compared with a 7.2 percent decline in the territory’s benchmark Hang Seng Index. CNOOC said it plans to start four new projects this year while drilling 115 exploration wells. The company is targeting production of 484 million barrels of oil equivalent next year and 502 million in 2018.
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