CHINA
Consumer inflation soars
Consumer inflation last month accelerated at its fastest pace in almost six years as African swine fever sent pork prices soaring nearly 70 percent, official data showed yesterday. The consumer price index hit 3 percent last month, the National Bureau of Statistics said, up from 2.8 percent in August and the highest since since November 2013.However, the producer price index — an important barometer that measures the cost of goods at the factory gate — contracted 1.2 percent from the previous year, the bureau said.
SINGAPORE
Apartment sales up 13%
Sales of private apartments last month jumped 13 percent to the highest in more than a year, even as home-price growth became more moderate. Developers in the city-state sold 1,270 apartments last month versus a revised 1,123 in August, Urban Redevelopment Authority data released yesterday showed. That is the most since July last year, when the government shocked the market by introducing curbs to take the heat out of residential real estate.
TRANSPORTATION
Uber retrenches about 350
In his latest bid to reduce losses at Uber Technologies Inc, chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi fired about 350 employees, in what he said is the “last wave” of workforce reductions. The cuts hit a handful of divisions, including self-driving car development and food delivery. Uber dismissed more than 800 employees over two rounds of cuts in July and last month. TechCrunch reported the news earlier on Monday, and an Uber spokesman confirmed the cuts. About 70 percent of the dismissals occurred in North America.
MOTORCYCLES
Harley electric bike on hold
Harley-Davidson Inc on Monday announced that it had suspended production and delivery of its LiveWire electric motorcycle, which the brand had rolled out as part of a diversification push. “We recently discovered a non-standard condition during a final quality check; stopped production and deliveries; and began additional testing,” the company said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision came after a problem with the vehicle’s battery charging was discovered.
BANKING
Negative rates at UniCredit
Italian banking giant UniCredit on Monday said it would pass on negative interest rates to clients with deposits of more than 1 million euros (US$1.1 million), having earlier spoken of charging for accounts with 100,000 euros. That would make it the first big eurozone bank to do so. UniCredit, which is also a major lender in Austria and several eastern European nations, plans to offer these clients money market investment alternatives on the balance up to 1 million that aim to avoid a negative return.
HOSPITALS
Metro Pacific ditches IPO
The hospital venture of a Philippine investment group delayed what would have been the nation’s biggest initial public offering (IPO) and instead plans to raise 35.3 billion pesos (US$684 million) by selling shares to KKR & Co and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte. KKR and GIC are to pay 5.2 billion pesos for a 2.7 percent stake in Metro Pacific Hospital Holdings Inc and buy bonds worth 30.1 billion pesos, convertible into 239.93 million shares, a statement said yesterday. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
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