JAPAN
Minister bemoans slow pace
The country’s plans to develop its renewable energy industry are lagging much of the world, as the nation has “prioritized keeping the status quo for fear of change,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono said. The government wants renewable energy to account for 22 to 24 percent of its overall energy mix by 2030, while the global average today is already 24 percent, Kono said on Sunday at an International Renewable Energy Agency meeting in Abu Dhabi. “As Japanese foreign minister, I consider these circumstances lamentable.” The country held its first-ever solar power auction in November, with the aim of reducing costs in one of the most expensive countries to generate electricity from the sun.
AVIATION
Airbus widens order lead
Airbus SE last year widened its order lead over US rival Boeing Co after racking up a record year of sales that included the European planemaker’s biggest-ever deal. Toulouse, France-based Airbus booked contracts for 1,109 jetliners, or 52 percent more than in 2016, it said in a statement yesterday. That extended the margin over Boeing to 197 planes after the US company secured 912 net orders. While the US company retains the title of world’s biggest planemaker after delivering an all-time high 763 aircraft versus Airbus’ 718, the order tally represents a coup for the European group after it had lagged behind its rival for much of the year. Airbus last month booked 776 aircraft sales net of cancelations, including a US$50 billion deal for 430 narrow-body aircraft initially announced in November at the Dubai Air Show.
SINGAPORE
Recovery faces challenges
Economic recovery is broadening out in the city-state, but there are still “real challenges” in the labor market, central bank Managing Director Ravi Menon said. Sustainable economic growth is estimated at 2 to 4 percent, Menon yesterday told delegates at the UBS Wealth Insights Conference in the city-state. Manufacturing is resilient and financial services are “doing well,” he said. The challenge on the labor supply side is whether the city-state can raise productivity given that its workforce is already well-educated and skilled, Menon said. “The disinflationary effects of globalization, for instance, may not persist for much longer,” he said. The return of inflation, which is most likely to be led by the US, will probably prompt faster tightening by central banks.
BANKING
Mizuho names new CEO
Mizuho Financial Group Inc named Tatsufumi Sakai to replace Yasuhiro Sato as chief executive officer, the first change at the helm of Japan’s third-biggest banking group since 2011. Sakai, 58, head of its securities unit, is to take the post on April 1, Mizuho said in a statement yesterday. He led the bank’s international unit before taking the helm at the brokerage arm in 2016. Koichi Iida, 55, is to take over as head of Mizuho Securities, and Sato, 65, is to become group chairman. Sakai inherits a bank whose financial performance has trailed behind Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc this fiscal year as the Bank of Japan’s negative interest rate policy squeezes domestic loan margins and saps profitability. Like its bigger rivals, Mizuho is cutting costs — it plans to eliminate 19,000 positions over the next decade — and diversifying operations away from traditional lending.
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