EQUITIES
STAR to debut on Monday
Less than a year after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) first touted the project, China’s new stock venue designed for technology start-ups is to start trading on Monday. Twenty-five companies will be part of the launch of the STAR board in Shanghai, out of the more than 100 hopefuls that applied to go public on the platform. Endorsement from top officials helped generate such enthusiasm that the firms raised a combined US$5.4 billion, about 20 percent more than planned. Demand from retail investors has outstripped supply by an average 1,800 times, even as some analysts voiced concern over lofty valuations. One company priced its shares at 171 times earnings. “There’s a good chance we’ll see a rush into these stocks due to the limited supply,” Bright Smart Securities analyst Mark Huang said.
SOFTWARE
FaceApp under investigation
Poland and Lithuania on Thursday said they were looking into the potential security risks of using a Russian-made face-editing app that has triggered a viral social media trend where users post “aged” selfies. The Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs said it was “analyzing” the security risks posed by FaceApp to the personal data of its users, despite assurances by its designers that the app is safe. “Various experts point to possible risks related to inadequate protection of users’ privacy,” the ministry said in a statement on its Web site. Cybersecurity authorities in Lithuania were also investigating potential threats posed by FaceApp, which might affect users’ personal data, Lithuanian Deputy Minister of National Defense Edvinas Kerza said.
TRADE
US launches sanctions
The US on Thursday imposed sanctions on an international network of companies and their agents it said were involved in the procurement of materials for Iran’s nuclear program. “[The US Department of the Treasury] is taking action to shut down an Iranian nuclear procurement network that leverages Chinese and Belgium-based front companies to acquire critical nuclear materials and benefit the regime’s malign ambitions,” US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The firsm acted as a procurement network for Iran’s Centrifuge Technology Co, or TESA, which plays a pivotal role in Tehran’s uranium enrichment nuclear program through the production of centrifuges used in facilities belonging to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the department said, adding that China-based Henan Jiayuan Aluminum Industry (河南嘉源鋁業) was contracted to sell more than US$500,000 of aluminum goods, including NSG-controlled items, to TAWU BVBA for use by TESA.
AUTOMAKERS
Oliver Zipse to lead BMW
BMW AG has promoted production chief Oliver Zipse to chief executive officer, resetting its leadership to catch up with rivals in the transition to an era of self-driving, electric cars. Zipse is to succeed Harald Krueger, 53, who stepped down after four years, following struggles to set a course for the German luxury-car maker, which consistently trailed Mercedes-Benz in sales while ceding the mantle of automotive innovator to Tesla Inc. Zipse, 55, will take charge of the Munich-based automaker on Aug. 16, succeeding Krueger, whose contract had been due to run through April 2020, the company said on Thursday, following a supervisory board meeting in the US. A BMW spokesman declined to comment on the terms of his contract.
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