INVESTMENT
VC firms invested US$84bn
Venture capital (VC) funding in the US has hit its highest level since the dotcom era. US venture firms last year deployed US$84 billion in more than 8,000 companies, research firm PitchBook said. The last time this much money sloshed around Silicon Valley and other tech hubs, many venture firms lost their investments in the dotcom bust of the early 2000s. That is far less likely to happen today. “While the figures are comparable to the dotcom era, the VC ecosystem appears healthy and driven by different dynamics,” PitchBook CEO and founder John Gabbert said in a statement. “Later-stage companies with strong consumer traction are commanding large rounds of financing.” The number of exits fell for the third consecutive year, the report said, the lowest since 2011.
SAUDI ARABIA
Foreign investor cap raised
The government is to lower minimum assets under management for qualified foreign institutions starting this month and allow foreigners to own up to 49 percent of listed securities as it opens up the stock market. The Capital Market Authority raised the limit for a single qualified foreign investor in a company to 10 percent and set the ceiling for foreign holdings in all categories, whether resident or nonresidents, at 49 percent, it said in a statement on Tuesday. In an initial proposal in 2014 that became effective the following year, the regulator had set a 5 percent limit for a qualified foreign investor in a single company. The agency also lowered the level of assets under management or custody investors must have from 3.75 billion riyals to 1.875 billion riyals (US$999.8 million to US$499.9 million). Formal approval of the new requirements, which take effect on Jan. 23, affirms an amended draft proposal from November last year.
AIRLINES
HNA failed to reveal assets
HNA Group Co Ltd (海航集團) said it failed to fully disclose how its US$350 million stake in Virgin Australia Holdings Ltd is controlled, less than a month after regulators in New Zealand blocked an acquisition, citing the Chinese conglomerate’s opaque ownership structure. Five substantial holder notices to the Australian Securities Exchange in 2016 and last year relating to HNA’s 20 percent stake left out entities with “relevant interest” in the airline, the Chinese company said in a letter to Sydney-listed Virgin Australia that was disclosed by the bourse on Monday. HNA’s belated disclosure lists 518 entities from South America to Asia that appear to deal in everything from hotels and refrigerated trucks to aviation and car rentals. The date on the letter, Tuesday last week, is just days after the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office barred HNA’s purchase of a local asset finance firm.
REAL ESTATE
Singapore prices to increase
Credit Suisse Group AG and Morgan Stanley are calling the end of Singapore’s property downturn, after a second consecutive quarterly increase in private residential prices. Home prices might rise as much as 10 percent this year, according to analysts at Credit Suisse, while Morgan Stanley and OCBC Investment Research expect as much as an 8 percent increase, according to reports from the brokerage firms. Private residential prices rose for a second straight quarter in the period ended on Sunday last week, reinforcing signs that the city-state’s property market is emerging from a four-year slump. Prices last year rose 1 percent, compared with a 3.1 percent decline in 2016, Singaporean Urban Redevelopment Authority data showed.
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