AUTOMAKERS
NIO files for New York IPO
NIO (蔚來汽車), an electric car maker seeking to compete with Tesla Inc, has filed for a US$1.8 billion initial public offering (IPO), becoming the first Chinese automaker to seek a listing in the US. The company, backed by technology giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), applied to list its American depositary receipts on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NIO. The US$1.8 billion registration amount is a placeholder to calculate filing fees. Nio and other Chinese electric car makers are raising funds to develop new products and power an expansion as the world’s biggest automobile market signals a shift to battery-powered vehicles in a bid to cut pollution and reduce dependence on imported oil.
ADVERTISING
WPP to move headquarters
WPP PLC is set to move out of its central London headquarters after 30 years, in another break with the past following the departure in April of founder and CEO Martin Sorrell from the world’s largest advertising company. The company would stop leasing the small mews property which, despite its location in Farm Street in the upscale district of Mayfair, is one of the more low-key headquarters for a FTSE 100 company. Staff from the head office, who cover areas such as legal and finance, are to move into Sea Containers, a large office on the south bank of the River Thames that is already home to some of WPP’s agencies. However, that building might not be large enough for all the staff in the parent company and the long-term ambition is for all staff to work together, sources said.
FINANCE
Two dealmakers promoted
Morgan Stanley is promoting a pair of dealmakers in Southeast Asia, with one banker rising from intern to a senior position in just seven years. The US firm has appointed Jannie Tsuei, who started as an associate intern in New York in 2011, as chief operating officer for Southeast Asia investment banking, an internal memo showed. It also named Jonathan Pflug, who joined Morgan Stanley as an associate that year, to head Southeast Asia mergers and acquisitions and Singapore coverage. Tsuei, who is a vice president at the firm, began her finance career on Morgan Stanley’s real-estate investment banking team in the US before moving to Singapore in 2015, the memo showed. Earlier this year, she transitioned to Singapore coverage and has been helping build out the firm’s work on healthcare deals in the region. A representative for Morgan Stanley confirmed the contents of the memo.
BANKING
Deutsche Bank to add staff
Deutsche Bank AG has almost finished restructuring its Asian investment banking business and plans to add bankers in the coming months, regional head James McMurdo said. “Yes, we did trim, but we trimmed where we thought we were less competitive, or where we thought the opportunity was not that significant and that has largely been completed,” McMurdo said in a telephone interview on Monday. He said that the lender is focused on Asia, servicing clients in local markets, as well as global capital markets and cross-border deals. His comments follow those of Lok Yim, head of the Asia-Pacific wealth business, who last week said that the German lender is still recruiting for that business in the region. Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing has pledged to keep the lender “strong” in Asia, even as he prepared to overhaul operations worldwide.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the