JAPAN
Industrial output edges up
Industrial production rose for a third consecutive month in October, with a slight gain just beating the median forecast of economists, as exports made up for weak domestic spending. Industrial output rose 0.1 percent from a month earlier (versus a forecast of 0 percent). Output is expected to rise 4.5 percent for last month, then fall 0.6 percent this month. October’s rise reflected solid trade, as exports gained sequentially for a third month, while household spending and retail sales both declined compared with the previous year. “The results weren’t bad as shipments had a good gain and inventories fell, with a slight gain in production,” said Yoshiki Shinke, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. A pickup in global demand for information-technology products, such as smartphones, and economic recoveries in the US and Asia are helping Japanese exports and production, Shinke said.
INTERNET
German hack tied to others
A cyberattack that infected nearly 1 million routers used to access Deutsche Telekom Internet service was part of a campaign targeting Web-connected devices around the globe, the German government and security researchers said on Tuesday. The revelation from the German Office for Information Security stoked fears of an increase in cyberattacks that disrupt Internet service by exploiting common vulnerabilities in widely used routers, Web cams, digital video recorders and other Web-connected devices. Security researchers said the infections spread to countries including Brazil, Britain and Ireland using a technique similar to one that stopped millions of people in the US and Europe from reaching Web sites such as PayPal Holdings Inc , Twitter Inc and Spotify on Oct. 21.
INVESTMENTS
PIF to get capital boost
Saudi Arabia is to transfer 100 billion riyals (US$26.7 billion) to its sovereign wealth fund, as the kingdom seeks to diversify investments. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) will focus on international and domestic deals, including some “high-yield opportunities in the local market that support the private sector,” according to a statement by the state-run Saudi Press Agency yesterday, which did not give more details. The funds will be transferred to the PIF from the kingdom’s reserves. PIF’s investments will help diversify sources of income, it said. Saudi Arabia unveiled plans earlier this year to transform the PIF from a domestically focused investment firm into a US$2 trillion sovereign wealth fund as the OPEC member seeks to boost income from investments. Since then, the fund agreed to invest US$3.5 billion in taxi-hailing app Uber Technologies Inc.
TRADE
Group warns on Brexit tariffs
Brexit-related tariffs would add at least £4.5 billion (US$5.6 billion) a year to the cost of car imports and exports between Britain and the EU, an industry body said, urging Britain to remain in the single market after it leaves the union. Britain exported just under 80 percent of the 1.6 million cars it built last year and imported more than 85 percent of the 2.6 million cars sold in the country. Without single market access, cars could face WTO tariffs of 10 percent, unless a special deal is struck for the sector. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders on Tuesday said that tariffs could add up to £1,500 to the average cost of an imported car and its president told the car body’s annual dinner that the government needed to maintain free trade.
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