CRYPTOCURRENCY
Bitcoin extends recovery
Bitcoin yesterday extended its recovery in holiday-thinned trading, rising 10 percent to be up more than one-third from last week’s lows of below US$12,000. Bitcoin, the world’s biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, fell nearly 30 percent at one stage on Friday last week to US$11,159.93 and, despite a late recovery, had its worst week since 2013. Yesterday, it was quoted at about US$15,049 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange. The digital currency had risen about 20-fold since the start of the year, climbing from less than US$1,000 to as high as US$19,666 on Dec. 17 on Bitstamp and to more than US$20,000 on other exchanges.
MINING
Jiangxi Copper halts output
Jiangxi Copper Co (江西銅業), China’s largest copper producer, is halting all output in the province after the local government ordered the curbs to reduce pollution, a company official said yesterday. The smelter received the order on Monday evening to stop production for at least a week before a further assessment based on local pollution levels, the official said, asking not to be identified because of company rules. The firm, which has 1.02 million tonnes of annual capacity in the southeastern province, remains in talks with the government to halt only smelting and not refining operations to minimize losses, the official said. China is intensifying its campaign against air pollution by extending its winter manufacturing curbs in 28 northern cities to other provinces. Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group Co (銅陵有色), the nation’s second-largest copper producer, said earlier this month that it is halting as much as 30 percent of smelting capacity at its main production hub in the eastern province of Anhui after a similar order.
MERGERS
Nippon shop in Europe
Nippon Paint Holdings Co is shopping for large acquisitions, including in Europe, to expand outside Japan amid a global consolidation among the biggest coatings makers. “While our expansion is centered on China and other Asian countries in line with our mid-term plan, we also aim to expand through M&A [mergers and acquisitions] in Europe and the United States,” Nippon Paint president Tetsushi Tadoh said, according to company spokeswoman Yukiko Mochida. Tadoh’s comments were published yesterday in the Nikkei newspaper. Tadoh’s confirmation that the Osaka-based paintmaker is looking to grow through acquisitions comes about a month after its offer for Axalta Coating Systems Ltd, the world’s largest maker of coatings for cars, failed to produce a deal. Philadelphia-based Axalta, with a market value of about US$8 billion, said on Dec. 15 it hopes to be a major player in the industry’s consolidation and is open to mergers and acquisitions.
REAL ESTATE
Court to auction skyscraper
A Chinese court is auctioning a skyscraper on the country’s largest e-commerce Web site — with a sky-high starting price of 553 million yuan (US$84.2 million). The 39-floor building in Taiyuan, northern Shanxi Province, along with the land on which it sits, goes on the block on Tuesday next week on Taobao (淘寶), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (阿里巴巴) e-commerce platform. Construction on the skyscraper began in 2006. Standing 156m high and with more than 76,000m2 of floor space, it was originally designed to be a hotel, Xinhua news agency said.
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],”