SOVEREIGN DEBT
Fitch cuts Turkey rating
Fitch Ratings Ltd on Friday cut its outlook for Turkey’s sovereign debt rating to “negative,” saying last month’s coup attempt underscored risks to political stability in the country. The agency affirmed the country’s rating at “BBB-,” a notch above junk grade. The rating is in line with Moody’s Investors Service, which has placed it on review for a possible downgrade while it assesses the impact of the military takeover attempt. S&P Global Ratings lowered Turkey one level to “BB,” two steps below investment grade, on July 20.
UTILITIES
State Grid ‘disappointed’
China’s State Grid Corp (國家電網) — the world’s biggest utility — on Friday said it “deeply regrets” Australia’s decision to stop the company from buying a majority stake in the state-owned power network Ausgrid. The company said it agreed to participate in the bidding after an invitation from the New South Wales government in November last year and has “absolutely” followed the guidance and conditions set by the seller through to submission of the final paperwork. “We find it hard to understand and are very disappointed” that bidders were rejected on the pretext of national security at a very late stage, the state-owned company said in a statement.
BANKING
JPMorgan wins lawsuit
JPMorgan Chase & Co, the biggest US bank, is to be paid US$645 million from a receivership estate to end a dispute over who was responsible for toxic securities created by a failed bank acquired during the financial crisis. The agreement with Deutsche Bank AG and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was signed on Friday, New York-based JPMorgan said in a regulatory filing. It resolves claims among the three parties over more than US$6 billion in securities backed by flawed Washington Mutual Inc mortgages. The agreement is subject to judicial approval.
COSMETICS
Estee Lauder outlook glum
Estee Lauder Cos provided a full-year profit forecast that trailed analysts’ estimates, citing economic turbulence and a stronger dollar that are hurting its sales overseas. Profit would be US$3.38 to US$3.44 per share, excluding some items, in the year through June, the New York-based company said on Friday. While Estee Lauder’s outlook was glum, its profit for the latest quarter topped analysts’ expectations. Earnings were US$0.43 per share, excluding some items, beating the US$0.40 average estimate. Revenue was US$2.65 billion, just missing the US$2.66 billion average projection, hurt by a 0.7 percent drop in skincare sales.
BANKING
RBS clients to pay interest
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS), Britain’s largest taxpayer-owned lender, said some of its biggest trading clients must pay interest on collateral as a consequence of low central-bank interest rates. Some of the bank’s institutional clients would need to pay interest on funds pledged as collateral when trading futures contracts, the bank said on Friday. The changes for pound and euro futures and options trading would probably affect about 60 large clients, a person with knowledge of the matter said earlier on Friday.
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