ELECTRONICS
ZTE signs US agreement
ZTE Corp (中興通訊) has signed an agreement in principle that would lift a US Department of Commerce ban on buying from US suppliers, allowing China’s No. 2 telecom equipment maker to get back into business, sources familiar with the matter said. A department spokesman on Tuesday said that “no definitive agreement has been signed by both parties.” ZTE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The department plans to amend its settlement agreement from last year and count the US$361 million ZTE paid as a part of that, allowing the US to claim a total penalty of as much as US$1.7 billion, the sources said. Over the weekend, ZTE signed the agreement drawn up by the US, the sources said, but the amended settlement has not been signed.
BANKING
Australia files cartel charges
Australia on Tuesday laid cartel charges against banking companies Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), plus six bank executives, over the sale of A$2.5 billion (US$1.91 billion) in ANZ shares to institutional investors three years ago. The charges involve alleged cartel arrangements relating to trading in ANZ shares held by Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. ANZ and officials from all three banks are alleged to have been knowingly concerned in the conduct, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement. The three banks deny the allegations.
MALAYSIA
Central bank head resigns
Central bank Governor Muhammad Ibrahim has resigned, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said yesterday, after claims that the bank helped the previous regime cover debts linked to a financial scandal by purchasing government land. Announcing Muhammad’s resignation, Mahathir said that the Harvard-educated banker’s replacement had not yet been decided on and the king still needed to give his approval. Muhammad, who had served with the central bank since 1984, was only two years into his term as governor which was due to end in 2021.
MEXICO
Duties placed on US goods
Steep duties on a raft of US products ranging from whiskey to apples were announced on Tuesday in retaliation for the “unilateral adoption” by Washington of steel and aluminum tariffs. The Secretariat of Economy published a list of US products that would be subject to duties of between 15 and 25 percent, including pork, cheese and grapes. The products concerned are for the most part agricultural goods, but some metal-based products such as steel plating and tubing are also included.
UNITED STATES
Land to be taken for Foxconn
A village board in southeast Wisconsin has deemed thousands of hectares of farmland and a few dozen homes to be blighted, allowing it to seize the property for a Foxconn Technology Group (富士康) manufacturing complex. Mount Pleasant trustees declared the area blighted on Monday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Under state law, a property can be deemed blighted if it is predominantly open or impedes the growth of the community. Most homeowners in the area have agreed to sell their property or would be subject to eminent domain.
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],”
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained