JAPAN
Prices continue to decline
The nation’s consumer prices continued to slide last month, marking the 22nd straight monthly decline as the economy remained mired in deflation, government data showed yesterday. Core consumer price index, excluding volatile food items, fell 0.4 percent last year year-on-year, slightly better than market expectations of a 0.5 percent fall, according to a Dow Jones Newswires poll of analysts. Prices fell by 0.5 percent in November. For last year, Japan’s core consumer prices fell 1.0 percent from 2009, the government said. Unemployment rate fell below 5.0 percent for the first time in 10 months last month to 4.9 percent, improving 0.2 points from the previous month. For the year, the jobless rate was flat at an average of 5.1 percent.
UNITED KINGDOM
Consumer confidence plunges
UK consumer confidence plunged the most in almost two decades this month as an increase in sales tax hurt shoppers’ appetite for spending, a report by GfK NOP Ltd showed. The index of sentiment fell 8 points from last month to minus 29, the lowest since March 2009, the research group said in a statement in London yesterday. The decline was the biggest since 1992, it said. All five measures of the index fell, with a gauge on the climate for making major purchases dropping 22 points to minus 29. “Today’s figures, when combined with the bleak economic forecast, will make talk of a double-dip recession unavoidable,” GfK Social Research managing director Nick Moon said in the statement.
ENERGY
Rosnet, Exxon strike deal
Russia oil giants Rosneft and Exxon Mobil struck a billion-dollar deal to hunt for oil and gas under the Black Sea. Rosneft president Eduard Yurevitch Khudaynatov said he hoped to find 1 billion tonnes of oil and gas — mainly oil — in the 11,200km2 Tuapse Trough, in waters off the Krasnodar region. The Exxon Mobil contract was the second major victory for Russian oil at this year’s Davos, after Rosneft marked the first day of the meeting by expanding its Arctic deal with BP.
ELECTRONICS
Fujitsu’s profit quadruples
Fujitsu’s quarterly profit quadrupled from the meager earnings eked out a year earlier when the Japanese electronics maker racked up heavy losses from job cuts in Europe. Fujitsu Inc, which provides technology services for mobile devices and servers, reported yesterday it made October-December profit of ¥16.5 billion (US$200 million), up from ¥4.1 billion the same quarter in 2009. Sales dipped 4 percent to ¥1.096 trillion as demand weakened in technology services and electronic components. Sales were also hurt by the rising yen, which reduces the overseas earnings of Japanese exporters, erasing ¥45 billion from sales.
BANKING
La Caixa to list retail banking
Spain’s biggest savings bank La Caixa, announced on Thursday a complex deal to list its 9.48 billion euro (US$13 billion) retail banking operations on the market, part of a major industry shake-up. The bank said the boards of the firms involved agreed to an outline deal transferring La Caixa’s retail banking business into its listed investment arm, Criteria, to be known as CaixaBank. The deal was approved by the boards of La Caixa, Criteria and wholly owned affiliate Microbank, to create a structure able to comply with stricter new Spanish and international rules on banks’ balance sheets, it said in a statement released to Spain’s stock market regulator.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of