CHINA
Factory prices up
The price of goods at the factory gate last month rose in China for the first time in more than four years, officials said yesterday. The producer price index (PPI) rose 0.1 percent year-on-year in the month, the National Bureau of Statistics said, adding that it “ended 54 consecutive months of year-on-year falls.” The PPI rise “should ease any lingering concerns about deflation,” Julian Evan-Pritchard, an analyst with research firm Capital Economics, said in a research note. Bureau analyst Yu Qiumei (余秋梅) attributed the PPI increase to strengthening international commodity prices and Beijing’s efforts to address industrial overcapacity.
TECHNOLOGY
HP to cut up to 4,000 jobs
HP Inc on Thursday said it will cut 3,000 to 4,000 jobs over the next three years as it faces continued challenges in the markets for personal computers and printers. The cuts are in addition to 3,000 jobs that HP previously said it was trimming this fiscal year. A spokeswoman said the company has about 50,000 employees worldwide. The company is one of two companies formed last year by the break-up of the old Hewlett-Packard Inc. The other, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co, primarily sells servers and other data-center technology.
BANKING
UniCredit raises 552m euros
UniCredit SpA on Thursday said it had raised more than half a billion euros as part of its latest asset sale, part of Italy’s largest bank’s effort to boost its funds without raising capital from shareholders. The 552 million euros (US$609 million) from the sale of 20 percent of its online banking subsidiary, Fineco, is to be used to boost Unicredit’s core capital — the amount of funds available to absorb losses — which has recently fallen perilously close to European banking limits. Unicredit, Italy’s largest bank by assets, said the funds should add 0.12 percentage points to core tier 1 ratio, which had fallen to 10.3 percent in June.
INTERNET
Yahoo hack to impact deal
Verizon Communications Inc’s top lawyer said it has reason to believe Yahoo’s recently disclosed data breach has a “material” impact on Verizon’s pending US$4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo. That leaves open the possibility that Verizon could seek a change in the price or other terms. Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman made the comments to reporters during a roundtable discussion on Thursday. Silliman did not say whether Verizon will seek a price reduction, but added that Yahoo will have to convince Verizon if it does not believe the breach of at least 500 million users’ e-mail accounts had a significant impact on its business.
ASIA
Region to weather Fed hike
Asia is poised to withstand higher US interest rates with risks of capital outflows and weaker currencies exaggerated, according to the Asian Development Bank. “Asia is in a pretty good shape to weather this looming US rate hike,”ADB principal economist Donghyun Park said in Manila on Thursday. “Emerging markets especially in Asia have relatively robust, strong economic and structural fundamentals. I’m quite optimistic that the effect will be subdued and muted. The risks are quite exaggerated, overstated.” The more vulnerable emerging markets are outside Asia, including Brazil, Russia and Turkey, Park said.
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],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
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