Germany
Siemens denies cover-up
Siemens AG said a decision not to publish a manuscript about the company’s recent history, including some findings about a corruption scandal, was not a cover-up. German weekly Der Spiegel said Siemens had failed to honor an agreement with two historians to publish a book manuscript which has been completed since 2014. Siemens was involved in one of Germany’s biggest corporate bribery scandals. The firm was exposed as having run an elaborate bribery network, paying more than USS$1 billion in kickbacks to win contracts worldwide. Siemens denied allegations raised in the Der Spiegel report.
TURKEY
Credit outlook lowered
Moody’s Investors Service lowered Turkey’s credit outlook, citing persistent political uncertainty after the failed coup in July last year. Moody’s reduced the outlook to negative from stable and kept its rating one notch below investment grade at “Ba1,” on par with Russia, according to a statement on Friday. Fitch Ratings ranks the nation at the same level, citing the continuing erosion of Turkey’s institutional strength and weaker growth outlook as reasons for its change.
LAYOFFS
Indiana factories cut jobs
About 1,500 workers at three Indiana factories are still facing layoffs, despite hopes that US President Donald Trump would intervene to prevent their jobs from moving to Mexico. The first wave of 50 layoffs has already happened at United Technologies Corp’s 700-worker electronics plant in Huntington, which is slated for closure. Another 550 job cuts are expected at Carrier Corp’s Indianapolis factory, where Trump’s intervention last fall curbed job losses, but did not halt them altogether.
ENTERTAINMENT
Disney to pay back wages
Walt Disney Co has agreed to pay US$3.8 million in back wages to 16,339 employees, including workers at its Florida theme parks whose hourly pay allegedly fell below the minimum wage after it deducted the cost of uniforms and costumes. The company also failed to compensate employees for duties performed before the start of their shifts and failed to maintain accurate payroll records, the US Labor Department said on Friday in announcing the agreement.
BANKING
Blankfein’s pay reduced
Goldman Sachs Group Inc has reduced chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein’s annual compensation by 27 percent, awarding him US$22 million for last year after eliminating a long-term incentive award, the New York-based firm said on Friday in its annual proxy filing. Blankfein is to become the third-highest paid CEO of the six largest US banks, falling behind JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Jamie Dimon, who received US$28 million, and Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman, with US$22.5 million.
FOOD
No contamination evidence
Shanghai government inspectors said they found no evidence to support a Chinese television show’s claim that Muji retail stores in the city stocked food imported from areas of Japan allegedly contaminated by radiation. The city’s Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau said on Friday that it inspected food sold at Ryohin Keikaku Co’s Muji chain in Shanghai and cleared the items. China Central Television’s annual “name-and-shame” show on Wednesday night accused Muji and Japanese snack maker Calbee Inc of mislabeling items.
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