BANKING
ANZ offloads bank stake
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) yesterday completed the sale of its stake in Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank and announced plans for a A$1.5 billion (US$1.15 billion) share buyback with the funds. The lender agreed to offload its 20 percent holding in the company earlier this year for A$1.84 billion, with Chinese shipping giant China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co (中遠集團) and Shanghai Sino-Poland Enterprise Management Development Corp (上海中波企業管理發展有限公司) each taking 10 percent. The move is part of ANZ’s plan to simplify its business, having announced last year the sale of its retail and wealth management arms in five Asian countries to Singapore’s DBS.
CHINA
Planning conference opens
A major economic planning conference yesterday opened as Beijing tries to pivot away from its no-holds-barred growth model. The annual Central Economic Work Conference gives leaders the opportunity to review past economic policy and plan for next year. The pursuit of high growth propelled China to the No. 2 spot on a list of the world’s largest economies, but led to heavy pollution, rampant waste, and a mountain of debt. President Xi Jinping (習近平) has said the nation would move in a new direction, telling the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Congress in October that China needs to shift from high growth to high quality development.
SOUTH KOREA
Ministry reveals FTA plan
The Ministry of Trade yesterday said it had reported to the nation’s parliament a plan to renegotiate the 2012 free trade agreement (FTA) with the US after US President Donald Trump threatened earlier this year to scrap the accord unless it was revised. The ministry said in a statement that yesterday’s report completes South Korea’s own process to begin renegotiations of the KORUS FTA, as it is known. Specific dates for renegotiations are to be determined. South Korea seeks to protect sensitive industries such as agriculture and livestock while formulating its approach to subjects the US is expected to raise, including products’ country of origin, services, investment and non-tariff measures, the ministry said.
FOOD
Hershey to buy Amplify
Hershey Co is near a US$1.6 billion deal to buy Amplify Snack Brands Inc, said CNBC, which cited unidentified sources familiar with the matter. The deal values Amplify at US$12 a share, CNBC said, which would represent a 71 percent premium to Friday’s closing price of US$7 a share. Texas-based Amplify has a market cap of US$537 million and markets brands including SkinnyPop popcorn. Total debt as of Sept. 30 was US$590.5 million, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
UNITED STATES
Growth may quicken Fed hikes
Investors have been underestimating the importance of US economic growth for US Federal Reserve policy, and giving too much relative emphasis to inflation and wage data that have tended to disappoint expectations, Goldman Sachs Group Inc said. If it starts looking more likely that US growth is to stay above its potential rate, that could boost the chances of a labor-market overheating that quickens the pace of Fed rate increases, Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a note on Sunday. “We think the market might be under-appreciating the importance of growth indicators for the monetary policy outlook,” the Goldman analysts wrote.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”