SAUDI ARABIA
Banks chosen for bond sale
The kingdom has selected banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co and HSBC Holdings PLC, to help arrange the sale of a dollar-denominated bond to help plug its budget deficit, people familiar with the matter said. Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Citigroup Inc are to manage the offering, which might happen this month, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is not public. The Ministry of Finance declined to comment, as did HSBC, Goldman and JPMorgan, while Citigroup did not immediately comment. The kingdom plans to borrow the equivalent of US$31 billion this year to bridge an expected budget deficit of US$52 billion and fund growth plans after its economy shrank last year.
ENERGY
Maersk liability to linger
A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S is about to exit the Danish offshore oil industry that it created half a century ago. However, for the next few decades, it will be stuck with a liability stemming from that business that is as big as US$1.2 billion. Maersk on Friday won a key approval to sell its energy unit to Total S.A., with the Danish Energy Agency giving the green light to the US$8 billion deal. However, the agency made it a condition that Maersk pay for the eventual decommissioning of North Sea infrastructure such as platforms and pipes, if Total cannot when the time comes. The liability shows how deep Maersk’s ties to Denmark’s oil industry are. It founded the energy unit in 1962 when it obtained a 50-year exclusive contract. Maersk expects the Total deal to close this quarter. It said the current US$1.2 billion estimate for Danish decommissioning provisions will fall when Total and the other license partners redevelop the Tyra gas field.
BANKING
Barclays’ India link pays off
Barclays PLC’s attempts to scale up its cash management business in India via a tie-up with the country’s post office are starting to bear fruit, according to the UK bank’s local corporate banking head. The deal with the 164-year-old mail service, first agreed in 2015, allows Barclays to offer its cash management services via about 8,000 postal branches spread out across the country. That is vital for winning business from large Indian and global companies, which often have operations in many different cities. Barclays featured more prominently in a Greenwich Associates survey of Indian companies last year as a go-to bank for cash management services, especially among consumer goods firms and non-bank financial institutions, said Gaurav Arora, the Singapore-based head of corporate and institutional banking for India at Greenwich Associates.
LABOR
Gender pay gap is costly
Reducing the gender pay gap across Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations to match that of Sweden could boost GDP by US$6 trillion, according to new research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The gains would come from increased female participation in the labor market, entrepreneurship and women moving into higher-paid and skilled jobs. South Korea has the biggest disparity with a 37 percent gap, compared to an OECD average of 16 percent, PwC said. In Sweden, the difference is 13 percent, although Luxembourg’s gap is just 4 percent. PwC said the pay gap could be reduced through greater flexibility for working women as well as higher government spending on family benefits to encourage mothers to return to work, and measures such as shared parental leave.
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day