ECONOMY
Chinese inflation slows
Consumer inflation fell to a five-year low of 1.4 percent last month, the government said yesterday. The rise in the consumer price index (CPI) is the lowest since November 2009, coming in short of a median forecast of 1.6 percent in a Wall Street Journal survey of 16 economists and marking a slowdown from October’s 1.6 percent. The National Bureau of Statistics also said the producer price index — a measure of costs for goods at the factory gate and a leading indicator of the trend for CPI — fell 2.7 percent year-on-year.
SOUTH KOREA
Unemployment falls
The jobless rate inched down last year from a month earlier, with new jobs being created in a number of service and manufacturing industries, government data showed yesterday. The jobless rate last month stood at 3.1 percent, down from October’s 3.2 percent, Statistics Korea said. Unemployment among those aged 15 to 29 remained substantially higher at 7.9 percent, marginally down on the previous month’s 8 percent.
ECONOMY
Russian growth view dims
The World Bank announced a gloomier economic forecast for the country on Tuesday, as the ruble fell despite the central bank saying it had spent billions last week to prop it up. The World Bank on Tuesday predicted that the economy would shrink by 0.7 percent next year and said that the contraction would be worse if oil prices keep sliding. The bank had previously predicted zero growth for Russia for next year. Its new forecast was in line with one from the Russian Ministry of Economic Development last week, which predicted a 0.8 percent contraction next year.
AUSTRALIA
Media boss tops pay list
The head of leading domestic media group Nine Entertainment, David Gyngell, was the nation’s best-paid boss this year, raking in A$19.6 million (US$16.3 million), a survey showed yesterday. Gyngell had a base salary of A$2.7 million, the Australian Financial Review said in its annual executive survey, but he pocketed millions more in short-term and long-term incentives throughout the year, including A$2.5 million for taking the company to a listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
INTERNET
‘Make an offer’ on Amazon
Amazon said on Tuesday that it would allow online haggling between buyers and sellers for some items sold by third parties using the US online retail giant. The “make an offer” system to be implemented initially for about 150,000 items could allow Amazon to compete with retail rival eBay, but would not be an auction format. Amazon said in a statement that it would start using this model for sports and entertainment collectibles and fine art, and would “expand to hundreds of thousands of items from sellers in 2015.”
FAST FOOD
Tim Hortons sale approved
Tim Hortons Inc shareholders approved the sale of the doughnut chain to Burger King Worldwide Inc for about US$11 billion, paving the way for the creation of the world’s third-largest fast-food company. About 99 percent of votes cast by shareholders were in favor of the deal, Oakville, Ontario-based Tim Hortons said yesterday in a statement. The new combined business is to be called Restaurant Brands International, the company said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
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