ENERGY
China to maintain Iran trade
The US has been unable to persuade China to cut Iranian oil imports, two officials familiar with the negotiations said, dealing a blow to US President Donald Trump’s efforts to isolate the Islamic republic after his withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear accord. However, Beijing has agreed not to ramp up purchases of Iranian crude, the officials said. That would ease concerns that China would work to undermine US efforts to isolate Tehran by purchasing excess oil.
WATER
Hyflux looks to sell asset
Sembcorp Industries Ltd and Keppel Corp are among parties planning to study bids for Hyflux Ltd’s biggest asset, people with knowledge of the matter said, in a sale that is key to helping the cash-strapped company get back on its feet. Hyflux’s Tuaspring project, which includes Southeast Asia’s biggest desalination plant, has also drawn interest from Malaysian generator YTL Power International Bhd, the people said. The asset had a book value of S$1.47 billion (US$1.1 billion) at the end of March, Hyflux exchange filings showed.
AUTOMAKERS
Auto show to shift to June
The North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, considered for decades a key date on the global auto industry’s calendar, will soon be held every summer instead of in the winter. Beginning in 2020, the exhibition of car companies’ offerings would take place in June instead of January, the middle of the harsh Detroit winter, organizers said on Thursday. In recent years, major manufacturers have begun abandoning Detroit in favor of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is also held in January.
REAL ESTATE
Vancouver sales take a dive
Vancouver realtors have not had this lousy a July in almost two decades. Sales were down 30 percent from a year ago to 2,070 units, the fewest transactions in the month since 2000, Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver data released on Thursday showed. Sales of detached properties declined 33 percent from a year earlier, and apartments were down 27 percent. Detached homes sold for an average of C$1.61 million (US$1.24 million) and apartments averaged C$712,092.
INDIA
Rains should boost farming
The lifeblood of the country’s economy, the monsoon rains, should recover this month and next from below-average levels at the start of the season, the weather office said yesterday, supporting farm income and broader economic growth. The farming sector accounts for about 14 percent of the nation’s US$2 trillion economy and employs more than half of its 1.3 billion people.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota hits record profit
Toyota Motor Corp yesterday reported that its quarterly profit climbed 7.2 percent in April to June to a record ¥657.3 billion (US$5.9 billion), exceeding analysts’ forecasts, thanks to strong sales in the US and other overseas markets. The company said that sales rose 4.5 percent to ¥7.4 trillion, also a record. With uncertainties prevailing over possible US tariff increases, the company kept its profit forecast for the full year unchanged at ¥2.12 trillion and trimmed its sales forecast to 8.9 million vehicles from the earlier estimated 8.95 million units.
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