CHINA
Factory inflation slows
The cost of producing goods in factories slowed sharply last month, a sign that demand remains weak amid the US trade dispute, while consumer inflation also flagged, official data showed yesterday. The producer price index (PPI) rose 0.9 percent year-on-year last month, compared with a 2.7 percent rise the previous month. The reading marks the lowest growth since September 2016 and fell short of forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. A slowdown in factory gate inflation reflects sluggish demand, while a turn to deflation could dent corporate profits.
AUTOMAKERS
Ghosn reported sick
The lawyer for Nissan Motor Co’s former chairman Carlos Ghosn, who is being held on charges of falsifying financial reports, yesterday said that the 64-year-old businessman had a fever. Ghosn’s lawyer, Motonari Ohtsuru, said that doctors at the Tokyo Detention Center said he should rest after running a fever of 38.8°C late on Wednesday. Visits to Ghosn by consular officials and lawyers were postponed. On Tuesday, in his first public appearance since his arrest on Nov. 19 last year, Ghosn told a Tokyo court that he was innocent.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota announces recall
Toyota Motor Corp on Wednesday announced a recall of 1.7 million vehicles in North America as part of a general effort to replace defective Takata Corp airbags tied to about 20 deaths worldwide. The sprawling recall concerned 4Runner SUVs from model years 2010 to 2016, Corolla sedans and Matrix hatchbacks from 2010 to 2013, and Sienna minivans from 2011 to 2014. The recall also involves Luxury Lexus models and Scion XB compacts, Toyota said.
WORKSPACE SHARING
WeWork receives funding
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp has invested US$2 billion in shared-office provider WeWork Cos, considerably less than the US start-up was hoping for to fund its expansion. WeWork boss Adam Neumann had earlier spoken of about US$20 billion in investment. The US$2 billion cash injection brings to a total of US$6 billion the amount invested by the Japanese firm and values WeWork at US$47 billion.
MOROCCO
Mine closures announced
Authorities last year closed 2,000 illegal mineshafts in Jerada, an impoverished former coal town that has been the site of a string of deadly mining accidents. The closure of the “abandoned and illicitly exploited shafts” was announced on Wednesday by the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which promised to shut about 1,500 shafts that remained by the end of this year. Eighty-two million euros (US$95 million) would be invested in industry and agriculture projects by 2020, the ministry said.
MEXICO
Inflation reaches 4.83%
The nation registered inflation of 4.83 percent last year, beating the central bank’s target, despite a downward trend for the year, official data released on Wednesday showed. The key interest rate in Latin America’s second-largest economy after Brazil stood at 8.25 percent, a level it also reached during the 2008 financial crisis. Analysts polled by the central bank forecast inflation of 3.89 percent for this year.
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
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
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