AUSTRALIA
Interest rates on hold
The Reserve Bank of Australia held interest rates unchanged since August last year, remaining on the sidelines as lending curbs take steam out of housing markets in Sydney and Melbourne and as prospects for a pickup in business investment emerge. “The recent data have been consistent with the bank’s expectation that growth in the Australian economy will gradually pick up over the coming year,” Governor Philip Lowe and his board said after yesterday leaving the cash rate at 1.5 percent, as expected by markets and economists.
BANKING
Citigroup to tap wealthy
Citigroup Inc is planning to hire 100 wealth advisers in Australia over the next three years as it seeks to triple its number of wealthy customers in the nation with more than A$1 million (US$797,845 ) to invest. Citi’s Australian wealth arm posted a 14 percent rise in assets under management last year, according to its statement yesterday. Australia has the third-largest pool of high-net worth individuals in the Asia-Pacific, with more than 230,000 people with A$1 million or more to invest, Citigroup’s Head of Asia-Pacific Retail Banking Gonzalo Luchetti said. Citi’s Australian expansion strategy follow similar plans in Asia-Pacific.
UNITED KINGDOM
Retail climbs on high costs
Retail sales climbed in August at the fastest rate since Easter, with the like-for-like gain increasing to 1.3 percent from a year earlier, the British Retail Consortium and KPMG said yesterday. While that is the third consecutive month of rising sales, growth has been mainly driven by higher food prices rather than because shoppers are buying more goods, according to the BRC. Purchases of non-food items picked up in the three months to August after a spell of weakness. Separate data from Barclaycard showed annual consumer-spending growth slowed last month to 2.9 percent as shoppers tightened their belts.
SOUTH AFRICA
Steinhoff seeks shares sale
Steinhoff Africa Retail Ltd is seeking to raise as much as 18.4 billion rands (US$1.4 billion) in a sale of stock this month, the largest by a South African company in almost two years. The owner of retailers including pan-African clothing chain Pep and Ackermans will offer about 800 million shares at between 18 rands and 23 rands each, it said in a statement on Monday. That amounts to about 23 percent of the total stock to be listed in Johannesburg, with Amsterdam-based parent Steinhoff International Holdings NV retaining a majority stake.
INVESTMENT
Carlyle Group exonerated
Carlyle Group LP was exonerated in a lawsuit tied to the collapse of a mortgage fund from 2008, avoiding US$1 billion in damages sought by the pool’s liquidators. Billionaire chief investment officer Bill Conway and other Carlyle entities acted in the best interests of Carlyle Capital Corp during the 2008 financial crisis and the fund’s insolvency was due to an unforeseen liquidity crunch, the Royal Court of Guernsey ruled on Monday. The decision comes after a years-long dispute between Washington-based Carlyle and the fund’s liquidators, who alleged that the partnership and fund’s board of directors were negligent, grossly negligent or had willfully mismanaged the pool and breached certain fiduciary duties. Carlyle Capital was a leveraged mortgage-bond fund formed in 2006 at the height of the real-estate bubble.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last