ITALY
Growth target 1.5 percent
The government is targeting economic growth of 1.5 percent next year, rising to 1.6 percent in 2020, financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore said yesterday. The newspaper said growth was targeted to then fall to 1.4 percent in 2021. The paper said the numbers would be submitted immediately to the parliamentary budget office, the authority that evaluates government forecasts. The government on Wednesday gave budget deficit and debt targets for the next three years, but did not release growth targets. The IMF has forecast growth of 1 percent in Italy next year.
AUTOMAKERS
Car registrations slump
British car registrations dropped 20.5 percent last month compared with the same month last year following the introduction of new emissions standards, industry figures showed yesterday. In the year to date, car sales were down 7.5 percent compared with the first nine months of last year, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said. On Sept. 1, the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure came into force in the EU, which led some brands to incentivize sales in August, pulling forward demand.
ENERGY
Gazprom, OMV ink deal
Russia’s Gazprom and Austria’s OMV AG have signed an agreement on a project to develop the Urengoy gas field in western Siberia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after talks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Wednesday. The document was signed by Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller and OMV chief executive Reiner Seele in front of the two leaders. Gazprom deliveries to Germany and Austria reached a historic high this year.
BANKING
Belgian sale mooted
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is in advanced negotiations to sell its Belgian business to private equity firm Warburg Pincus, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Italian bank, advised by Rothschild & Co, is close to reaching an agreement and a deal could be announced as soon as next week, the people said. The transaction could value the unit at almost 50 million euros (US$58 million), they said.
BOOKSELLERS
Barnes & Noble mulls bids
The board of Barnes & Noble Inc says it is reviewing the company’s future after several parties expressed interest in buying it. The company on Wednesday said that its board had appointed a special committee to review the offers. One of the interested parties is its founder and chairman, Leonard Riggio, who is credited with turning Barnes & Noble into a superstore. According to FactSet, Riggio owns 19 percent of the company and is its largest shareholder.
TELECOMS
Verizon offering buyouts
Verizon Communications Inc is offering buyout packages to as many as 44,000 management employees as part of a cost-cutting drive, potentially eliminating more than a fourth of its workforce. The offer, which excludes executives in sales or crucial company roles, is part of a four-year, US$10 billion cost-reduction program that chairman Lowell McAdam put in place last year. A spokesman declined to say how many of the 44,000 managers are expected to take the offer and leave the company.
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
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