OIL
Aramco sees supply balance
The global oil market should be balanced early next year, after oversupply drove prices to multiyear lows this year, Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Saudi Aramco) president and chief executive Amin Nasser said on Tuesday. “The gap between supply and demand is closing,” he told an international energy forum, adding that Saudi Aramco’s analysis sees the market “balanced by the first half of 2017.”
INVESTMENTS
China worried over probes
China hopes Germany’s recent security investigations into proposed acquisitions by Chinese firms are “an exception,” Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman Shen Danyang (沈丹陽) told a regular news briefing yesterday in Beijing. The German government has withdrawn its approval for a Chinese takeover of chip equipment maker Aixtron, citing security concerns. It has also reportedly turned down a Chinese request for approval of a takeover of Osram’s light bulb unit Ledvance pending a review of the deal. “China hopes Germany’s security reinvestigation into the case is only an exception, not meaning that Germany will change its economic policies, because it will be bad for China and German’s trade development and outlook,” Shen said.
AUTOMAKERS
US auto sales dip 4.4%
US auto sales fell last month, in a fresh sign of slowing in the industry as US automakers struggled to maintain recent high levels of demand. Total vehicle sales for the month fell 4.4 percent below the same month last year to 1.39 million units, according to figures produced by Autodata. That left sales for the first 10 months down 0.1 percent from the same period last year, pointing to a likely full-year decline for the industry after last year’s record performance. General Motors Co, the biggest US automaker, on Tuesday said that sales last month slid 1.7 percent from a year ago, with 258,626 vehicles sold.
RESTAURANTS
McDonald’s to settle suit
US fast-food giant McDonald’s Corp has agreed to pay US$3.75 million to settle a labor dispute with workers at a California franchise, court documents showed on Tuesday. If approved by a federal judge, the agreement would be the first time McDonald’s has reached a deal with employees of a franchise. The deal would resolve a class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco two years ago. Under the plan, McDonald’s will pay US$1.75 million to the employees and US$2 million in court costs. The workers said the restaurant franchise withheld wages and overtime pay, as well as reimbursement for the upkeep of uniforms, and denied them legally required breaks.
TECHNOLOGY
Rhode Island suing HPE
Rhode Island is suing Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) over a long-delayed project to build a new computer system for its Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV). A lawsuit filed on Tuesday in the Superior Court seeks a temporary restraining order and injunction that would block the Palo Alto, California-based company from walking off the project. The lawsuit says the state has already paid more than US$13 million for a new DMV computer system that has not been fully delivered. HPE said it met its contractual obligations with the state and tried to reach a fair resolution. It said in a statement that “given the progress that has been made by both parties, it is unfortunate the state has derailed this project by being unwilling to pay for additional work” that it says the state requested and it performed.
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