INVESTMENT
Blackstone buying GLP assets
Blackstone Group LP is doubling down on the future of online shopping, agreeing to buy US$18.7 billion of US logistics assets from Singapore’s GLP Pte in what it has said is the world’s biggest private-equity real-estate deal. Blackstone would gain 16.6 million square meters of urban logistics assets, greatly expanding the size of its US industrial footprint, the New York-based company said in a statement late on Sunday. In April, Blackstone reported that its assets under management crossed half a trillion US dollars, to US$512 billion, for the first time.
AUTOMAKERS
Elon Musk unveils SUV plan
Tesla Inc chief executive officer Elon Musk has said that the company’s “default plan” is to produce the Model Y sport utility vehicle (SUV) at its sole auto plant in Fremont, California. The electric automaker makes the Model S, Model X and Model 3 in Fremont, but produces battery packs and drive units at its gigafactory near Reno, Nevada. It has been weighing the pros and cons of each location, including space constraints and labor costs due to the Bay Area’s high cost of living.
ABU DHABI
Growth to average 2.5%
The sheikhdom’s economic growth is to average 2.5 percent in the four years through 2022 as it benefits from higher oil production and prices, S&P Global Ratings said on Friday. Economic growth in the largest and richest of the seven sheikhdoms that make up the United Arab Emirates is expected to accelerate to 2 percent this year from 1.8 percent last year, S&P Global Ratings said in a report. The ratings company said that it expects growth to accelerate to 2.5 percent next year and 2021 before climbing to 3 percent in 2022.
MALAYSIA
Durian fruits bound for China
The country is all geared to satisfy China’s craving for durian, after the Chinese General Administration of Customs has approved imports of frozen whole durian fruit starting on Thursday following an agreement signed in August last year, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Sim Tze Tzin (沈志勤) said. China imports about 300,000 tonnes of durian each year, mainly from Thailand, he said on Friday.
TELECOMS
Plan clears Hawaii hurdle
T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp have inched one step closer to a deal after winning an approval for their merger from Hawaii’s public utilities commission, a filing showed. The approval is subject to certain conditions. The approval means that T-Mobile and Sprint have 18 out of 19 public utility commission approvals. The two companies only need approval from California and the US Department of Justice to complete the deal. T-Mobile’s US$26.5 billion takeover of Sprint has faced a number of regulatory hurdles, with US antitrust officials possibly still wanting to see four nationwide wireless carriers.
FOOD MAKERS
Mondelez mulls cheese sale
Mondelez Global LLC is considering a sale of its Philadelphia soft cheese business as it looks to focus on its faster-growing chocolate and biscuit brands, the Telegraph has reported. Bankers and private equity firms are evaluating the business, the paper said, citing sources. “Philadelphia is a high-quality business for us and provides strong margin and cash flow, as well as scale benefits in several markets,” a Mondelez spokesman said.
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