BANKING
ANZ offloads bank stake
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) yesterday completed the sale of its stake in Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank and announced plans for a A$1.5 billion (US$1.15 billion) share buyback with the funds. The lender agreed to offload its 20 percent holding in the company earlier this year for A$1.84 billion, with Chinese shipping giant China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co (中遠集團) and Shanghai Sino-Poland Enterprise Management Development Corp (上海中波企業管理發展有限公司) each taking 10 percent. The move is part of ANZ’s plan to simplify its business, having announced last year the sale of its retail and wealth management arms in five Asian countries to Singapore’s DBS.
CHINA
Planning conference opens
A major economic planning conference yesterday opened as Beijing tries to pivot away from its no-holds-barred growth model. The annual Central Economic Work Conference gives leaders the opportunity to review past economic policy and plan for next year. The pursuit of high growth propelled China to the No. 2 spot on a list of the world’s largest economies, but led to heavy pollution, rampant waste, and a mountain of debt. President Xi Jinping (習近平) has said the nation would move in a new direction, telling the Chinese Communist Party’s 19th National Congress in October that China needs to shift from high growth to high quality development.
SOUTH KOREA
Ministry reveals FTA plan
The Ministry of Trade yesterday said it had reported to the nation’s parliament a plan to renegotiate the 2012 free trade agreement (FTA) with the US after US President Donald Trump threatened earlier this year to scrap the accord unless it was revised. The ministry said in a statement that yesterday’s report completes South Korea’s own process to begin renegotiations of the KORUS FTA, as it is known. Specific dates for renegotiations are to be determined. South Korea seeks to protect sensitive industries such as agriculture and livestock while formulating its approach to subjects the US is expected to raise, including products’ country of origin, services, investment and non-tariff measures, the ministry said.
FOOD
Hershey to buy Amplify
Hershey Co is near a US$1.6 billion deal to buy Amplify Snack Brands Inc, said CNBC, which cited unidentified sources familiar with the matter. The deal values Amplify at US$12 a share, CNBC said, which would represent a 71 percent premium to Friday’s closing price of US$7 a share. Texas-based Amplify has a market cap of US$537 million and markets brands including SkinnyPop popcorn. Total debt as of Sept. 30 was US$590.5 million, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
UNITED STATES
Growth may quicken Fed hikes
Investors have been underestimating the importance of US economic growth for US Federal Reserve policy, and giving too much relative emphasis to inflation and wage data that have tended to disappoint expectations, Goldman Sachs Group Inc said. If it starts looking more likely that US growth is to stay above its potential rate, that could boost the chances of a labor-market overheating that quickens the pace of Fed rate increases, Goldman economists led by Jan Hatzius wrote in a note on Sunday. “We think the market might be under-appreciating the importance of growth indicators for the monetary policy outlook,” the Goldman analysts wrote.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
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