EMPLOYMENT
US numbers improve
Companies in the US continued to add a solid number of jobs last month, increasing payrolls by 200,000 as the labor market improves, payroll firm ADP reported on Wednesday. ADP revised downward the February payrolls number to 205,000 from 214,000, but overall private-sector job growth has held above 190,000 for five months. Companies with at least 500 employees slowed hiring, adding 39,000 jobs last month, about half the increase in February.
EMPLOYMENT
BlackRock to cut 400 jobs
BlackRock Inc plans to cut about 400 jobs in what might be the biggest round of layoffs to date at the world’s largest money manager, people with knowledge of the matter said. The reductions, equal to about 3 percent of the firm’s 13,000 employees, would be announced in the coming weeks, the people said. Despite the cuts, the firm would continue to invest and hire in key areas and expects to end the year with a higher headcount, one of the people said. In a memo to employees, BlackRock said the job cuts have not yet been finalized.
? ECONOMY
Eurozone confidence falls
A closely watched survey shows that economic confidence across the 19-country eurozone fell for a third consecutive month last month, reaching a 13-month low, the latest in a run of figures to indicate that the recovery is losing pace. In its monthly assessment of confidence, the EU’s executive arm said its economic sentiment indicator fell 0.9 points to 103.0 last month. The European Commission said the deterioration in sentiment was due to lower confidence among consumers as well as managers in the services and construction sectors. The commission said that its survey results were collected before the Brussels terror attacks on Tuesday last week.
ECONOMY
Portugal outlook falls
Portugal’s central bank on Wednesday lowered its growth forecast for this year due to slowing investment by companies and a worsening global outlook. The eurozone nation is now set to see GDP increase by 1.5 percent, the central bank said. That was down from its previously forecast 1.7 percent growth for this year. The Portuguese government still holds on to its forecast of the economy expanding by 1.8 percent this year, while the EU sees 1.6 percent growth and the IMF just 1.4 percent.
ECONOMY
Turkey’s GDP grows 4%
Turkey’s GDP grew 4 percent last year from a year earlier, the nation’s statistics office said yesterday, beating expectations and helped by an unexpectedly robust fourth quarter. The economy grew 5.7 percent in the final quarter of last year from the same period a year earlier, the office said in a statement, well above the market consensus. The full-year growth figure was well above the 2.9-percent reading in 2014.
TELECOMS
Italian firm names new head
Telecom Italia SpA on Wednesday appointed Flavio Cattaneo as its new chief executive, nine days after his predecessor quit following a clash with France’s Vivendi SA, the company’s biggest shareholder. Marco Patuano stepped down on Monday last week after Vivendi reportedly demanded larger-than-planned cuts under a restructuring program he had outlined for this year to 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