AUSTRALIA
Housing prices plummet
Sydney’s property downturn accelerated last month, propelling nationwide housing prices to the biggest monthly drop since the global financial crisis, as credit curbs and buyer nerves continue to bite. Nationwide home values fell 0.7 percent last month, led by a 1.4 percent drop in Sydney and 1 percent in Melbourne, according to CoreLogic Inc data released yesterday. The drop takes the total decline in Sydney since peak in July last year to 9.5 percent, on the cusp of overtaking the 9.6 percent top-to-bottom decline recorded during the last recession 27 years ago.
SOUTH AFRICA
Government eyes rating
The government is prioritizing regaining an investment-grade rating on its debt as part of its plans to revive a stagnant economy, Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni said on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina on Saturday. While Mboweni said he is not sure how long it will take to recover investment-grade status, the government needs to enhance policy certainty and credibility, lower debt and show restraint in fiscal support for struggling state-owned companies. Moody’s Investor Service is the only one of the three major credit-rating companies that still assesses the country’s debt at investment grade.
INVESTMENT
Group bids for GrainCorp
A group of Australian investors backed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc offered A$2.4 billion (US$1.8 billion) to take control of GrainCorp Ltd, five years after the Australian government rejected a foreign bid for the crop handler. The newly formed asset manager, led by prominent businessman Tony Shepherd and Lance Hockridge, offered A$10.42 a share in cash. That was 43 percent more than GrainCorp’s last closing price on Friday.
MEDIA
Nexstar to buy Tribune
Nexstar Media Group Inc agreed to buy Tribune Media Co for US$4.1 billion, creating the largest owner of local TV stations in the US, according to a person with knowledge with the matter. Nexstar outbid private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC with an all-cash offer that values Tribune at about US$46.50 a share, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the purchase is not yet public.
UNITED STATES
Banks maintain Fed forecasts
Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are sticking by their forecasts that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates four times next year, while acknowledging that the risks to their outlook mounted this week. “Recent events have increased the downside risks to our baseline forecast,’’ Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius said in a report. Nevertheless, they joined counterparts at Morgan Stanley in saying that Fed might this month reduce the number of rate increases they expect for next year to two from three.
UNITED STATES
NYSE to close in mourning
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is to be closed tomorrow for a national day of mourning to honor former president George H.W. Bush. The NYSE was yesterday to observe a minute of silence in honor of the former president, said Kristen Kaus, a spokeswoman for the exchange. The nation’s financial markets traditionally close following a presidential death.
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