BANKING
New loans surge in China
New loans extended by Chinese banks jumped to 948.7 billion yuan (US$141.8 billion) last month, up from the 463.6 billion yuan in July, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) said on Wednesday. The figure was below June’s 1.38 trillion, but beat a median forecast of 750 billion yuan in a survey by Bloomberg News. In a separate statement, the PBOC said that total social financing — an alternative measure of credit in the real economy — also leaped, tripling to 1.47 trillion yuan last month from 487.9 billion yuan in July. The figure also beat Bloomberg’s median forecast of 900 billion yuan.
EUROZONE
Industrial production down
Official figures show that industrial production across the 19-country eurozone fell 1.1 percent in July, a development that could seriously weigh on the region’s third-quarter growth. The decline reported on Wednesday by Eurostat, the union’s statistics agency, more than offset the previous month’s 0.8 percent gain. Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, was the chief reason behind the fall, as it recorded a 1.9 percent monthly decline.
LIGHTING
Tech Pro boss’ assets frozen
The chairman of Tech Pro Technology Development Ltd (德普科技), an LED lighting product maker deemed worthless by short-seller Glaucus Research Group, has had some of his assets frozen by a Hong Kong court and also faces a bankruptcy claim. The High Court on Aug. 30 granted a Mareva injunction covering up to HK$11.2 million (US$1.4 million) of Li Wing Sang’s (李永生) assets in the territory, Tech Pro said on Wednesday evening. Citic Securities Brokerage (HK) Ltd (中信證券) on Monday filed a claim for bankruptcy proceedings against Li, a court document showed. The legal issues are Li’s personal matters and not related to the firm’s business, Tech Pro said. The chairman has not provided any financial assistance or guarantee to the company, it said.
PROPERTY
Singapore home sales drop
Home sales fell last month in Singapore, as developers marketed fewer projects in a month considered inauspicious by Chinese homebuyers. Developers sold 473 units last month, compared with 1,091 in July, according to data released yesterday by the Urban Redevelopment Authority. That is the lowest sales since February. The seventh month of the lunar calendar year, known as the Ghost Month, is a time homebuyers avoid property purchases. Meanwhile, an index tracking private residential prices fell 0.4 percent in the three months ended June 30 from the previous quarter, capping the longest series of quarterly losses since 1975, when prices were first published, according to data from the urban authority in July.
RESTAURANTS
McDonald’s gets final bids
Fast-food giant McDonald’s Corp has received final bids from at least three groups for its China and Hong Kong outlets, with global private equity firms Carlyle Group and TPG Capital separately teaming up with Chinese partners for the business worth up to US$3 billion, sources said. Carlyle has joined with Chinese state conglomerate CITIC Group (中國中信集團), while TPG has teamed up with mini-market operator Wumart Stores Inc (物美商業集團) on their separate bids for the 20-year franchise, said the sources, who declined to be named. Real-estate firm Sanpower Group (三胞集團) also made an offer for the assets, one of the sources said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by