BRAZIL
Officials to go on road shows
The government plans to host a round of investor meetings to market a broad plan of asset sales, a key initiative to help raise cash and reduce a record budget deficit, a senior official and people familiar with the matter said. Wellington Moreira Franco, the head of a government agency charged with attracting foreign investment, said a round of so-called road shows is seen as a necessary step to advertise the assets and the legal and regulatory framework behind the program. He did not give a timetable nor say which assets would be sold. However, five sources with knowledge of the plan said that Moreira Franco and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jose Serra would lead the road shows, which might take place in New York, London and other financial hubs.
INSURANCE
AXA to sell tobacco assets
French insurer AXA SA plans to stop investing in the tobacco industry, citing the impact of smoking on public health, and said it plans to sell 1.8 billion euros (US$2.02 billion) of assets in the sector. AXA said it would divest its 200 million euros of equity holdings in tobacco companies immediately. It also plans to stop all new investment in tobacco industry corporate bonds and run off its existing holdings worth about 1.6 billion euros. “With this divestment from tobacco, we are doing our share to support the efforts of governments around the world,” incoming AXA CEO Thomas Buberl said in a statement.
PETROLEUM
McMurray camps reopen
Authorities in Canada have announced the reopening of eight shuttered work camps south of the wildfire-ravaged oil town of Fort McMurray, paving the way for energy firms to restart production. Municipal authorities on Sunday evening announced a “phased re-entry” for camps near Nexen’s Long Lake and ConocoPhillips Co’s Surmont facilities, both of which stopped production due to the fire. The municipality is also reopening camps near Enbridge Inc’s Cheecham terminal, which the company has said was returning to full service.
NATURAL GAS
Japan prices hit 11-year low
Japan, the world’s biggest buyer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), last month paid the lowest price in about 11 years for the fuel amid a global oversupply. The average price of LNG shipments into the country was about US$6.32 per million British thermal units last month, the least since August 2005, according to Bloomberg calculations based on preliminary data from the Japanese Ministry of Finance. Prices are expected to rebound in coming months as crude values have surged, Clavis Energy Partners LLC managing partner Junzo Tamamizu asid. LNG under long-term contracts imported into Asian countries are typically linked to oil prices with a time lag of several months.
INSURANCE
Aegon divests annuities
Aegon NV, the Dutch owner of US insurer Transamerica Corp, divested the final £3 billion (US$4.4 billion) of annuities from its UK portfolio to Legal & General Group PLC (L&G). The transaction, which covers 27,000 policyholders, is to release another £275 million of capital that had been set aside under Solvency II regulations, the company said in a statement yesterday. Aegon is to initially reinsure the liabilities to L&G followed by a so-called Part VII transfer that is to boost its capital ratio by about 20 percentage points. “The divestment is an important step in the strategic repositioning of our business in the UK,” Aegon CEO Alex Wynaendts said in the statement.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”