AUTOMAKERS
Nissan issues airbag recall
Nissan Motor Co has said it would recall more than 3.8 million vehicles, mostly in North America, because the passenger-side airbag might not deploy in a crash due to a defect in the seat sensor. The Japanese automaker said the global recall would cover 2013 to 2017, including some Nissan Altima, Leaf, Maxima, Murano, Pathfinder, Sentra and Rogue models. It said a fault in the sensor not properly registering when the passenger seat was occupied could lead to failure to deploy the airbag in the event of a collision.
EUROZONE
Growth up, inflation still low
Growth in the eurozone strengthened far beyond expectations in the first quarter, but inflation remained very low and a source of concern. The Eurostat statistics agency said growth in the 19-nation single currency bloc accelerated in January to last month to 0.6 percent. This expansion was double the 0.3 percent posted in the two previous quarters in the eurozone and put the bloc on course to grow by 1.6 percent year-on-year. Analysts surveyed by Factset had forecast growth of 0.4 percent in the period.
PORTUGAL
Financial access granted
Portugal kept its much-needed access to EU financial help on Friday after an European Central Bank-approved credit agency maintained its rating of Portuguese debt at investment grade level. Toronto-based DBRS announced it had kept Portugal’s rating at “BBB” level, with a “stable” perspective. Portugal’s public debt, though, is still forecast to hit 130 percent of GDP.
SOLAR PANELS
Yingli mulls bankruptcy
Yingli Green Energy Holding Co (英利綠色能源) signaled that it might tip into bankruptcy as its losses widened and talks continue with creditors about repaying loans due on May 12. The Chinese solar-panel manufacturer said there “is a substantial doubt as to its ability to continue as a going concern.” Its net loss for last year is likely to widen to as much as 5.9 billion yuan (US$911 million) from 1.3 billion yuan in 2014, Yingli said in a statement.
TECHNOLOGY
TiVo sells for US1.1bn
Rovi Corp agreed to buy digital-video recording pioneer TiVo Inc in a deal valued at US$1.1 billion, adding crucial patents for cable set-top boxes just as competition for those devices is heating up. Rovi is to pay US$10.70 a share in cash and stock, according to a statement on Friday. The on-screen TV guide provider’s offer breaks down to US$2.75 a share in cash and US$7.95 a share in common stock of the new company.
COMMUNICATIONS
Vodafone picks banks
Vodafone Group PLC has chosen banks to arrange a listing of its India business, which could raise as much as US$3 billion and become the nation’s largest initial public offering, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Newbury, England-based company picked Bank of America Corp, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd and UBS Group AG to lead the offering, which could take place in the next year, according to the people. Vodafone India is the country’s second-largest wireless carrier after Bharti Airtel Ltd.
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