NEW ZEALAND
First-quarter growth slows
Economic growth slowed in the first quarter as uncertainty over government policies weighed on business and consumer confidence, damping investment and spending. GDP gained 0.5 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, when it rose 0.6 percent, Statistics New Zealand said in Wellington yesterday. From a year earlier, the economy expanded 2.7 percent, down from 2.9 percent in the previous three-month period. Today’s data matched economists’ median forecasts in a Bloomberg survey.
ARGENTINA
IMF approves US$50bn loan
The IMF on Wednesday formally approved a US$50 billion aid package intended to help the nation confront inflation, budget deficits and a weakening currency. The fund’s executive board approved the agreement that the government struck with IMF staff earlier this month. The nation plans to draw on the first US$15 billion tranche of the aid program, of which half will be used for budget support, while treating the remaining US$35 billion as “precautionary,” the IMF said.
AUSTRALIA
Senate approves tax cuts
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has achieved an important political victory with the Senate passing personal income tax cuts worth A$144 billion (US$106 billion) over a decade. The Senate yesterday endorsed the tax cuts 37 votes to 33. The government holds only 31 of the 76 seats in the Senate. Minor parties provided the majority that the legislation needed, with opposition Labor Party senators voting against it.
RETAIL
Walmart finances India buy
Walmart Inc sold US$16 billion of bonds to help finance its investment in India’s biggest online seller, Flipkart Group, in the second-largest US corporate debt sale of the year. The retailer offered fixed-rate and floating-rate notes in nine parts. The longest bond, a 30-year security, yields 1.05 percentage points above US Treasuries, less than the initial 1.2 percentage points that were being pitched earlier in the day, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Walmart last month said that it would acquire a 77 percent stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, leaving the remainder to Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal and other shareholders.
ENTERTAINMENT
AMC launches new pass
AMC Theatres, the world’s largest movie theater chain, on Wednesday unveiled a US$20-a-month subscription service to rival the flagging MoviePass. The theater chain announced a new service to its loyalty program, AMC Stubs, allowing subscribers to see up to three movies a week for a monthly fee of US$19.95. That is more expensive than the US$9.95 monthly fee for MoviePass, but AMC’s plan gives access to premium format screenings like IMAX and 3-D.
HEALTHCARE
US giants team up on care
Amazon.com Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Berkshire Hathaway Inc are turning to well-known author and Harvard professor Atul Gawande to transform the healthcare they offer their employees. The three corporate titans on Wednesday said that Gawande is to lead an independent company that focuses on a mission they announced earlier this year: figuring out ways to provide high-quality, affordable care. Health care researchers have said that the alliance could shake up how Americans shop for care.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
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