LAWSUITS
US takes aim at 1MDB
US federal prosecutors could file civil lawsuits as early as yesterday in a bid to seize assets purchased with money allegedly misappropriated from a Malaysian state investment company, the Wall Street Journal reported. The US Department of Justice’s Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative is leading the potential asset seizure as it steps up a probe into people and institutions connected to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), the report said, citing people it did not identify. It is not clear what assets will be confiscated but it is likely to include properties, the report said. The fund, whose advisory board was headed by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak until it was dissolved recently, is embroiled in multiple global probes related to allegations of money laundering and embezzlement.
SEMICONDUCTORS
ASML forecast disappoints
ASML Holding NV, Europe’s largest semiconductor-equipment maker, gave a sales forecast that trailed analysts’ estimates, a sign customer investments in new machinery are yet to accelerate. Third-quarter revenue will be about 1.7 billion euros (US$1.87 billion), the Veldhoven, Netherlands-based company said in a statement yesterday. Analysts had predicted 1.74 billion euros on average. ASML’s second-quarter sales were 1.74 billion euros, while net income declined 4.3 percent to 354 million euros.
ENTERTAINMENT
China Film Co plans IPO
China Film Co (中國電影公司), the nation’s largest movie distributor, is planning a 4.09 billion yuan (US$612.29 million) initial public offering (IPO) in what would be the biggest IPO in the country’s entertainment industry. The unit of state-owned China Film Group Corp (中國電影集團) plans to offer as many as 467 million shares to be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, according to a filing yesterday. The company is to begin gauging investors’ interest from Friday through Monday next week and start the offering on Thursday next week. Proceeds are to be used for movie production and investments in cinemas, the company said.
INVESTMENTS
ADIA announces gains drop
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), one of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds, said its long-term gains dropped last year. The fund’s 20-year annual rate of return slowed to 6.5 percent at the end of last year, from 7.4 percent in 2014, it said in its annual review. Over three decades, annual returns fell to 7.5 percent from 8.4 percent. The Abu Dhabi government will probably take billions of dollars out of ADIA to help finance the emirate’s budget amid a slump in oil prices, Fitch Ratings Ltd said in February. Assets will drop to US$475 billion at the end of this year, from an estimated US$502 billion at the end of 2014, Fitch said.
CHINA
Foreign ownership eased
The government said it is exempt foreign makers of motorcycles and batteries from ownership limits in their manufacturing operations, revising a key industrial policy just as rulemakers consider similar measures for automakers. The amended rules governing foreign investment are to apply to foreign companies setting up in the free-trade zones of Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong and Fujian, the central government said in a statement on Tuesday. Manufacturers such as Yamaha Motor Co and Samsung SDI Co were previously required to partner with local companies and could own as much as 50 percent of joint ventures.
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
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