UNITED STATES
GDP growth beats estimates
The economy grew stronger than expected in the fourth quarter of last year, but the revised data on Friday confirmed that a sluggish expansion heading into the new year. The Commerce Department said that GDP expanded at a 1 percent annual rate in the October-December quarter, faster than its previous estimate of 0.7 percent. Even with the upward revision, fourth-quarter growth marked a sharp deceleration from the 2 percent expansion in the third quarter and the robust 3.9 percent pace in the second quarter.
FRANCE
4Q GDP growth revised up
The nation’s economic growth was slightly better in the fourth quarter than previously thought, the national statistics office said on Friday. GDP growth for the fourth quarter stands at 0.3 percent, revised up from an earlier 0.2 percent estimate, statistics bureau Insee said. However, full-year GDP growth for last year remained unchanged at 1.1 percent and the unemployment rate was at 10.5 percent, it said.
CHINA
Home prices up in 38 cities
New home prices in China rose last month in more than half the cities the government monitors amid moves by authorities to loosen property curbs in regions with a surplus of unsold homes. New-home prices climbed in 38 cities, compared with 39 in December last year among the 70 cities tracked by the National Bureau of Statistics.
INTERNET
TPG in talks with Spotify
TPG Capital is in talks with Spotify Ltd about a possible investment in the music-streaming service, people familiar with the matter said. Spotify is trying to raise more than US$500 million through convertible debt, a person familiar with the company’s plans said last month. In June, Spotify said it had more than 20 million subscribers, but it faces stiff competition from Apple Inc. Meanwhile, Pandora Media Inc, which has Internet radio and on-demand music services, is exploring a possible sale, a person familiar with the matter said this month.
AVIATION
London airport to be sold
London City Airport, the closest air hub to the financial capital of Europe, is to be bought by a consortium of Canadian and Kuwaiti investors, the future owners said on Friday. The sale was announced by the Alberta Investment Management Corp, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and Wren House, an arm of the Kuwait Investment Authority. The value of the sale reached about £2 billion (US$2.8 billion), Bloomberg News reported.
AUCTIONS
Sotheby’s forecasts losses
Sotheby’s, the auctioneer that is undergoing a management shakeup under pressure from activist hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, forecast a significant first-quarter loss amid a decline in auction sales. First-quarter sales are down 33 percent so far this year, at US$438 million, the company said on Friday on a conference call, after reporting a fourth-quarter net loss of US$11.2 million. The shares fell the most in two weeks. Full-year net auction sales declined 3 percent to US$5.02 billion last year.
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