CHINA
Credit growth too fast: IMF
The nation has made progress on reforms, but still should allow market forces to play a more decisive role and accelerate its opening up to the rest of the world, the IMF said yesterday. While credit growth has slowed, it remains too fast, and policymakers should de-emphasize growth targets and focus on higher-quality growth, the fund said in a statement. The economic expansion would likely slow to 6.6 percent this year and to about 5.5 percent by 2023, the IMF said.
GERMANY
Retail sales beat forecasts
Retail sales last month rose more than expected after four consecutive monthly drops, data showed yesterday. The private consumption data showed retail sales rose by 2.3 percent on the month in real terms, the Federal Statistics Office said. It was the strongest monthly increase since October 2016 and beat the Reuters consensus forecast of a 0.7 percent rise. On the year, retail rose by 1.2 percent, slightly weaker than the Reuters consensus forecast of a 1.3 percent increase.
AVIATION
Longest flight to return
Singapore Airlines Ltd yesterday said that it would relaunch the world’s longest commercial flight in October, a journey of almost 19 hours from the city-state to the New York City area, but it would not be available to economy travelers. The daily, non-stop journey from Singapore Changi Airport to Newark Airport in New Jersey would cover about 16,700km and take about 18 hours and 45 minutes, the airline said in a statement. The current record holder is Qatar Airways Ltd Flight 921 from Auckland to Doha, which takes 17 hours and 40 minutes.
ADVERTISING
Sorrell invests in shell firm
Martin Sorrell, the recently ousted boss of WPP PLC, has taken control of a listed shell company to use it as a vehicle to buy marketing firms, replicating the approach he took in the 1980s to build the world’s biggest advertising group. Sorrell plans to invest ￡40 million (US$53 million) of his own money into Derriston Capital, a little-known two-year-old company, which would be renamed S4 Capital, he said in a statement.
? AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai to invest in Alabama
Hyundai Motor Co is to invest US$388 million to expand and upgrade its engine manufacturing operations in Montgomery, Alabama, and create 50 new jobs. The Seoul-based automaker is to spend about US$40 million to build a new engine-head machining facility that would be completed in November and be operational by the middle of next year, it said in a statement. The rest of the investment is to go toward equipment and updating its engine plant to support production of Sonata and Elantra sedans.
ENERGY
Canada buys pipeline
The Canadian government on Tuesday said it is buying a controversial pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to the Pacific Coast to ensure it gets built. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government plans to spend C$4.5 billion (US$3.46 billion) to purchase Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline. The pipeline expansion would triple the capacity of an existing line to ship oil extracted from the oil sands in Alberta across the snow-capped peaks of the Canadian Rockies.
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
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
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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