TRADE AGREEMENTS
Sri Lanka eyes China deal
Sri Lanka aims to finalize a free-trade agreement with China this year and the country’s prime minister is to visit Beijing in May, the Sri Lankan ambassador said yesterday. Speaking on the sidelines of a national day reception at the Sri Lankan embassy in Beijing, Ambassador Karunasena Kodituwakku said Sri Lanka wants to finalize free-trade deals with China and India this year, amid rising concern in the South Asian nation about Chinese investment. Hundreds of Sri Lankans clashed with police at the opening last month of a Chinese-invested industrial zone in the south, saying they would not be moved from their land.
MACROECONOMICS
UK’s service sector slows
Britain’s services sector last month slowed for the first time in four months, with activity hampered by a Brexit-fueled surge in costs, a survey showed on Friday. The Purchasing Managers’ Index for the nation’s services industry fell to 54.5 last month, down from 56.2 in August last year, data compiler IHS Markit revealed in a statement. That undershot market expectations of 55.8 and marked the slowest rise since October last year for the sector, which accounts for about 80 percent of British economic growth. Cost pressures have loomed large as the pound has been dogged by Britain’s looming EU exit.
ACQUISITIONS
Italian bank eyes Generali
Intesa Sanpaolo chief executive officer Carlo Messina on Friday said that the Italian bank is evaluating a potential takeover of the Generali insurance company, but would only proceed if the deal aligns with its strategic plans. Messina told analysts that the bank would take all the time necessary before deciding on such a move, and that a deal would be dependent on maintaining a dividend this year for the bank’s shareholders. The bank earlier released a statement saying that a possible merger was “only the subject of a case study,” one of the many options for growth that the bank is considering.
TECHNOLOGY
Planet Labs buys Terra Bella
Planet Labs Inc, a start-up that launches small satellites into orbit and sells the imagery, is acquiring Alphabet Inc’s Terra Bella satellite business in a bid to take on larger industry incumbents. In return, Alphabet’s Google is taking a stake in the start-up. Google has also agreed to purchase satellite images captured by Planet in a multi-year deal. The companies declined to share financial terms. With the deal, Planet is to receive seven high-resolution satellites that Terra Bella has in orbit. Planet plans to launch an additional six of Terra Bella’s satellites.
BANKING
Deutsche to cut staff: source
Deutsche Bank AG is about to eliminate staff at its trading business, according to a person familiar with the matter, a day after reporting results for the unit that missed analysts’ expectations. The bank is to cut as much as 17 percent of staff in its equities unit and reduce fixed-income headcount by as much as 6 percent, with notices to be served to employees soon, the person said. Deutsche Bank chief executive officer John Cryan is cutting 9,000 jobs across the company to raise profitability and capital levels eroded by misconduct costs.
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
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