JAPAN
Spending down again
Household spending fell for an eighth straight month last month, despite a 21-year-low unemployment rate, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications data showed yesterday. However, the 0.4 percent drop from a year earlier was a smaller decline compared with September’s 2.1 percent, partly because of higher vegetable prices. “Household spending has been flat in the past year because disposable income has not increased,” Dai-ichi Life Research Institute head economist Yoshiki Shinke said.
FOOD
PIF invests in Adeptio
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) is to acquire a 50 percent stake in a United Arab Emirates firm which last month took control of Kuwaiti food giant Americana, the fund said on Monday. Through a wholly owned subsidiary, PIF will obtain the share in Adeptio Holdings from Mohamed al-Abbar, the head of Dubai property giant Emaar. An Adeptio Holdings subsidiary, Adeptio, last month completed the nearly US$2.4 billion deal for 67 percent of Americana, the group that brought more than a dozen major food brands to the Middle East. “Following the acquisition of this stake in Americana, Adeptio will launch a mandatory tender offer for the remaining shares in Americana held by public shareholders,” PIF said in a rare news release.
AUTOMAKERS
BMW to invest in startups
BMW AG plans to boost its investments in startups, as competition intensifies with new rivals, including Tesla Motors Inc, over technologies that make cars smarter and more energy-efficient. The luxury-vehicle maker will invest as much as 500 million euros (US$533 million) through its iVentures capital fund over 10 years, Munich-based BMW said on Monday in a statement. The fund, which started in 2011 with 100 million euros, will add autonomous driving to its investment areas and expand its reach from the US to Europe and Asia. “The mobility of the future and our industry is being defined by the increasingly rapid pace of technological change,” BMW head of development Klaus Froehlich said in the statement. “Anyone who wants to succeed must shape this change and have access to the best ideas.”
SECURITY
Deutsche Telekom attacked
Deutsche Telekom AG fell victim to hackers using malware that targets household devices, with hundreds of thousands of customers experiencing technical issues with their phone, Internet and TV services. Hackers infected customers’ routers, causing as many as 900,000 of its more than 20 million landline subscribers to lose service or see disruptions starting on Sunday, the company said. The carrier’s network was not affected, it said in a Web site statement. “We saw attacks from the Mirai botnet that targeted customer routers globally,” Thomas Tschersich, head of IT security at Deutsche Telekom, said in a video message posted on Twitter. The issues have been largely fixed after the carrier sent software updates to the devices and updated its network, Tschersich said.
TUNISIA
Support on offer
Western and regional partners are expected to offer pledges of support for the nation’s economy at a two-day investment conference that started yesterday. Representatives from 40 countries are to be offered the chance to participate in about US$30 billion worth of projects. France and Qatar are the main foreign backers.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last