TOURISM
UAE visa scheme announced
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Monday introduced a multiple-entry visa scheme valid for five years for all nationalities, with the aim of turning the Persian Gulf state into a tourism hub. “#UAE Cabinet chaired by @HHShkMohd, approves new amendment for tourist visas in #UAE,” the government of Dubai Media Office wrote on Twitter, referring to Emir Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Emirati prime minister and ruler of Dubai. “The new tourist visa will be valid for 5 years and can be used for multiple entries and is open for all nationalities.” He said on Twitter that the state attracts 21 million tourists a year.
ENTERTAINMENT
Group seeks US$1.1bn loan
A consortium led by Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) is seeking a 1 billion euro (US$1.1 billion) five-year loan to help fund its US$3.4 billion purchase of a stake in Universal Music Group, people familiar with the matter have said. Five banks — Bank of America Corp, Bank of China Ltd (中國銀行), HSBC Holdings PLC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Asia) Ltd (中國工商銀行) and Morgan Stanley — are expected to provide the non-recourse financing as a club deal, people said. The Chinese social media and gaming giant and its partners last month agreed to buy a 10 percent stake in Universal Music from French media company Vivendi SA after months of talks.
AVIATION
BOC orders 20 Airbus jets
Singapore-based aircraft leasing firm BOC Aviation Ltd (中銀航空租賃) yesterday announced that it had ordered 20 Airbus A320neo planes, with up to 12 of them planned to go to Colombian airline Avianca SA. The order is worth approximately US$2.2 billion at list prices, but airlines and leasing firms typically negotiate discounts. “We are thrilled to welcome Avianca as a new customer,” BOC Aviation chief executive Robert Martin said in a statement. “This addition of 20 new Airbus A320neo aircraft reflects our disciplined investment strategy of building our portfolio with popular and in-demand new technology aircraft that provide reliability and operational efficiency.”
CHINA
Tax cuts boost growth
The nation’s economic growth was boosted by about 0.8 percentage points last year, following tax cuts of more than 2 trillion yuan (US$288 billion), the State Taxation Administration said on Monday. The tax cut was worth more than 2 percent of GDP, it said. That means that the nominal value of the economy likely grew to about 100 trillion yuan at the end of last year, according to Bloomberg calculations, up from 92 trillion yuan in 2018. Tax revenue rose 1.8 percent to about 14 trillion yuan last year, the agency said, lower than the 9.5 percent increase in 2018.
BANKING
UBS splitting its business
UBS Group AG is splitting its European wealth management business into three regions and expects to cut as many as 500 private banking jobs globally as it overhauls its most important division. The revamp would break apart the Europe, Middle East and Africa private banking business led by Christl Novakovic, giving Caroline Kuhnert responsibility for central and eastern Europe, and Ali Janoudi the Middle East and Africa. Novakovic would keep Western Europe, according to an internal memo from wealth management co-heads Iqbal Khan and Tom Naratil that was obtained by Bloomberg.
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