HONG KONG
Business conditions stabilize
Business conditions in Hong Kong last month showed further signs of stabilization, as the government further eased social-distancing restrictions with COVID-19 infection rates largely under control. The IHS Markit purchasing managers’ index for the territory climbed to 49.6 last month, the highest since March 2018, when the reading was last above 50, which marks expansion. The results show that businesses in the territory were more willing to invest in new capacity than in previous months, yet with sentiment still negative amid concerns about the long-term economic effects of the pandemic. The survey was conducted from June 12 to 25, ahead of the implementation of the national security legislation imposed by China.
SINGAPORE
PM vows smooth change
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) yesterday said that he is determined to hand over Singapore “intact” and in “good working order” to the next generation of leaders, predicting that the COVID-19 pandemic would “weigh heavily” on the nation’s economy for at least a year. Speaking ahead of general elections on Friday, Lee said it is unclear how the pandemic would end, adding that the nation’s “biggest challenges lie ahead of us.” He said: “We don’t know how the pandemic will end or whether a lasting solution will be found in a vaccine or more effective treatment. We face a continuing danger to public health.”
GERMANY
Manufacturing rebounds
New orders for German manufacturing firms rebounded in May as COVID-19 lockdowns eased, official data showed yesterday, but the smaller-than-expected increase highlights the long road ahead for pandemic-hit economies. The indicator of future industrial activity climbed 10.4 percent month-on-month, federal statistics agency Destatis said, after a historic 26.2 percent slump in April. The Ministry of Economic Affairs said that the latest data suggested “that the industrial recession has bottomed out” in Germany. However, with order intake still almost 30 percent lower than in May last year, “the catch-up process is far from over,” it said.
UNITED KINGDOM
Car registrations fall
British new car registrations fell by one-third on an annual basis last month, when many dealerships reopened after COVID-19 lockdown measures were lifted, according to preliminary data from an industry body, a smaller drop than in March, April and May. About 145,000 units were registered last month, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said. In March, demand fell 44 percent, in April by 97 percent and in May registrations were down 89 percent, it said. Year-to-date, the market was almost 50 percent behind where it was at the same time last year, it said.
BANKING
Turkey limits short-selling
Turkey imposed a ban on six foreign banks from betting against the nation’s stocks in a move that appeared to contradict recent steps toward easing such restrictions. Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Merrill Lynch International, Barclays Bank PLC, Credit Suisse Group AG and Wood & Co have been barred from short-selling stocks for up to three months, Borsa Istanbul said in a statement. The announcement came less than week after the country’s Capital Markets Regulator removed a short-selling ban on its largest listed companies on Tuesday last week.
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
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