UNITED KINGDOM
Living standards tighten
Standards of living are under more pressure now than at any time in the past two-and-a-half-years and the squeeze is getting tighter. Adjusted for inflation, regular pay rose just 0.1 percent in the three months through February, the weakest figure since the third quarter of 2014, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. Nominal earnings slowed to growth of 2.2 percent, a seven-month low. The combination of a pound-induced inflation surge and lackluster wage growth is eating into the spending power of consumers, the engine of the economy. Retail sales fell the most in six years in the first quarter, an industry survey showed this week.
TECHNOLOGY
Actility to enter industry
Actility, a European Internet of Things start-up has raised US$75 million from investors in a bid to win business in the industrial sector. Private-equity firms, including Ginko Ventures — the European investment fund of Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), as well as investments by operators of wireless networks like Koninklijke KPN NV, Orange SA and Swisscom AG. Actility raised US$25 million in 2015. It sells services like monitoring how much fuel Belgians have in their heating tanks at home, or alerting Amsterdam when the water is too high in its canals.
AIRLINES
Qantas halts Zimbabwe sales
Qantas Airways Ltd told travel agents in Zimbabwe to stop selling tickets for its flights after the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned it is getting harder to move funds out of the country, according to a circular sent by the Australian airline to agencies and seen by Bloomberg. The carrier is owed a “substantial” amount by Bank Settlement Plan Zimbabwe, the system that IATA uses to transfer local ticket revenue to airlines, according to the circular from Qantas’ regional manager for Africa Michi Messner. “We’ve been advised by IATA that the situation with the repatriation of funds out of Zimbabwe is worsening,” she wrote. Messner confirmed by telephone from Johannesburg on Tuesday that she had sent the letter, referring further questions to IATA.
SAUDI ARABIA
Debt bond attracts bids
The government’s debut dollar-denominated Islamic bond, which was due to price yesterday, had attracted more than US$17.5 billion of investor orders as of Tuesday evening, people familiar with the matter said. The government plans to sell the five-year sukuk in the 115 basis points area over mid-swaps and a 10-year tranche at a spread of about 155 basis points, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Books for sale opened to investors on Tuesday.
RETAIL
Tesco’s profits rise
Tesco PLC’s annual profit edged above analyst estimates in a boost for chief executive officer Dave Lewis as he seeks to shore up support for the UK supermarket leader’s planned takeover of food wholesaler Booker Group PLC. Adjusted operating profit rose 30 percent to £1.28 billion (US$1.6 billion) in the 12 months ended on Feb. 25, the UK’s largest retailer said in a statement yesterday. The average estimate in a Bloomberg survey was £1.26 billion. The earnings provide a tonic for Lewis, as dissent over his proposed £3.7 billion takeover of Booker has spread from the boardroom to the company’s investors.
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