GERMANY
Economy grows 0.6%
The economy expanded sharply in the first three months of this year, with GDP growing 0.6 percent from the previous three months, federal statistics authority Destatis said yesterday. It represented an acceleration over the second half of last year, when the economy had added just 0.2 percent between July and September, and 0.4 percent between October and December. First-quarter growth was driven by both foreign and domestic business. Foreign trade was also a boost, with exports growing faster than imports, Destatis said. Using a year-on-year comparison, GDP expanded by 1.7 percent, it said.
MALAYSIA
Central bank keeps rates
The central bank left its benchmark interest rate unchanged as policymakers judged consumer price gains will moderate and as a stronger ringgit reduced the need to guard against capital outflows. Bank Negara Malaysia kept its key rate at 3 percent, it said in a statement in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. Inflation was 5.1 percent in March, the fastest pace since 2008, as higher oil prices pushed up transport costs. The central bank in March forecast inflation to average 3 to 4 percent this year, up from 2.1 percent last year. Economic growth might quicken to as high as 4.8 percent, from 4.2 percent last year, it said. The country joins the Philippines in holding their firepower even as the threat of inflation grows in Southeast Asia.
STEELMAKERS
ThyssenKrupp to post loss
German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp AG yesterday said it would make a net loss for the financial year, slashing its forecast after the sale of a loss-making Brazilian steel mill. ThyssenKrupp, which runs its business year from October to September, said it booked net loss of 870 million euros (US$945 million) in the second quarter, or the three months to March. The industrial giant said it expected to make a “significant net loss” for the whole year. However, on an underlying or operating level, ThyssenKrupp raised its full-year profit forecast to 1.8 billion euros from 1.7 billion euros previously.
AUTOMAKERS
VW settles with US owners
A federal judge in San Francisco has approved a US$1.2 billion settlement with owners of about 88,500 Volkswagen (VW) vehicles with 3-liter diesel engines rigged to cheat on emissions tests. Judge Charles Breyer gave the deal final approval during a hearing on Thursday. The deal ends most of the litigation over Volkswagen AG cheating scandal, which became public in 2015. Owners of 3-liter models from 2009 to 2012 that cannot be fixed to meet pollution standards would be offered buybacks. They also would get compensation from US$7,755 to US$13,880. Those who own newer cars would get compensation of US$7,039 to US$16,114.
SAUDI ARABIA
Tower completion delayed
The completion date for the world’s tallest tower has been pushed back to 2019, a Saudi Arabian billionaire said on Thursday, almost six years after launching the record-breaking project. Jeddah Tower is to rise more than 1km, placing it above Dubai’s Burj Khalifa. “The project was delayed ... but it’ll open [in] 2019,” Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told reporters during a visit to the site beside the Red Sea. The project contractor Saudi Binladin Group was among construction firms in the kingdom that suffered financially after a collapse in oil revenues from 2014.
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