FOREX
HK yuan deposits plummet
Yuan deposits in Hong Kong posted their biggest monthly drop on record as the currency’s steepest annual depreciation in more than two decades undercut its appeal for savers. Savings in the Chinese currency fell 12.9 percent on the month to 546.7 billion yuan (US$79.4 billion) last month, the biggest drop since local banks started taking such funds in 2004, Hong Kong Monetary Authority data showed on Friday. The onshore exchange rate weakened 6.5 percent last year as capital outflows picked up amid higher US interest rates, while the offshore rate fell 5.8 percent.
INTERNET
PayPal talking to Amazon
Amazon.com Inc and PayPal Holdings Inc have discussed letting shoppers pay for Amazon purchases using their PayPal accounts, highlighting how PayPal can attract new partners since its 2015 split from Amazon rival EBay Inc. “We have been in conversations with Amazon,” PayPal chief executive officer Dan Schulman said on Thursday in an interview with Bloomberg. “We’re closing in on 200 million users on our platform right now. At that scale, it’s hard for any retailer to think about not accepting PayPal.” There are no details to announce, but Schulman said the conversations have focused on “how to use one another’s assets to the mutual benefit of our customers.”
TRANSPORTATION
Lyft changes tack on sales
Six months ago, Lyft Inc made a big push into corporate travel, building a team of several dozen employees to pitch banks, consulting firms and other companies on its ride-hailing services. This month, more than a dozen of those employees were dismissed or reassigned, part of a change in direction for the San Francisco company’s nascent sales efforts. David Baga, Lyft’s chief business officer who oversees sales, said the changes affected 17 people, primarily in sales support and business operations. Lyft, the second-largest US car-booking app, has about 1,500 employees in total. Baga said Lyft will focus more on governments and healthcare organizations.
AVIATION
ANA profit jumps
Japan’s All Nippon Airways (ANA) Co on Friday said net profit jumped in the nine months to last month thanks to falling fuel prices, a pick-up in the yen and cost-cutting measures. ANA Holdings Inc, the carrier’s parent, posted s net profit of ¥86.6 billion (US$752 million), up 18 percent from ¥73.3 billion the year before, it said in a statement. Revenue, however, edged down 2.7 percent to ¥1.33 trillion. ANA said the number of international passengers jumped 11.5 percent for the nine months, while that for domestic passengers edged up 0.3 percent.
CONGLOMERATES
Honeywell trims outlook
Honeywell International Inc’s profit matched analysts’ estimates as efficiency gains helped make up for soft corporate-jet demand and lower-than-expected sales of safety equipment. Fourth-quarter adjusted earnings rose to US$1.74 a share from US$1.53 a year earlier, Honeywell said in a statement. Sales were little changed at US$9.99 billion. “We expect the weakness in the business-jet market will persist over 2017,” chief financial officer Tom Szlosek said in a conference call on Friday. Revenue this year will be US$38.6 billion to US$39.5 billion, Szlosek said, down from a forecast last month of US$39.2 billion to US$40.1 billion. He blamed a strong US dollar for the reduced outlook.
AUTOMAKERS
Germany widens VW probe
Prosecutors in Germany said on Friday they are expanding their probe into Volkswagen AG’s (VW) scandal over diesel cars that cheated on emissions tests. As well as increasing the number of suspects, prosecutors said they have evidence former CEO Martin Winterkorn may have known of the cheating earlier than he has claimed. The prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig also said Winterkorn was now being investigated on suspicion of fraud, beyond an earlier focus on a possible securities-market violation. The 69-year-old Winterkorn stepped down in September 2015 and said at the time that he was not aware of any wrongdoing on his part.
MOROCCO
Agriculture slows growth
Morocco’s economy grew by 1.6 percent last year, down from the previous year’s 4.5 percent because of a poorly performing agricultural sector, Economy and Finance Minister Mohamed Boussaid said on Friday, attributing this “deceleration” mainly to a “very important fall” in the production of cereal crops. “2006 was the driest year in the past three decades,” Boussaid said, adding however that “the 70 percent drop in cereal production was partly offset by a very good performance of other agricultural products.” Agriculture remains the main contributor to the North African country’s GDP, ahead of both tourism and manufacturing.
EUROZONE
World Business Quick Take Agencies
Pope removed from coins
The Vatican will stop minting euro coins bearing Pope Francis’ image beginning in March, religious news agency I.media reported on Friday, saying the coins will now carry the Vatican’s coat of arms and EU stars. The EU’s official journal on Tuesday published pictures of the Vatican’s new coins (eight pieces ranging from 0.01 to 2 euros), and they show that Pope Francis’ image has been replaced. The image on the tails side of the Vatican coin is the same as on all of the other eurozone coins. The first annual series of papal coins entered circulation on March 1, 2002, bearing the image of then Pope John Paul II.
EUROZONE
Policy boots borrowing
Businesses and households in the eurozone borrowed more last month, data released on Friday by the European Central Bank showed, suggesting the institution’s loose monetary policy is reaching the real economy. Loans to households grew at 2 percent year-on-year in the final month of last year, correcting for some purely financial transactions — an increase of 0.1 percentage points over November’s figure. Meanwhile, growth in non-financial corporations’ borrowing added 0.2 percentage points to reach 2.3 percent, more than recovering from a slight fall in the pace of growth in November.
EDUCATION
Harvard fund to cut 115 jobs
The agency that oversees Harvard University’s largest-in-the-nation US$36 billion endowment is cutting half its staff as it tries to boost lagging investment returns. Harvard Management Co, the university’s investment unit, plans to eliminate its internal hedge fund teams by year’s end, eliminating about 115 jobs. It will instead focus on hiring outside investment managers, a model that is common among other universities. CEO N.P. Narvekar said in a memo that competition from outside managers has made it difficult to hire investment experts. He said the company can no longer justify its complex organizational structure.
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],”
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
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