GAMING
GameStop draws scrutiny
The top securities regulator in Massachusetts thinks trading in GameStop Corp stock, which on Tuesday skyrocketed for a fourth straight day, suggests there is something “systemically wrong” with the options trading surrounding the stock, Barron’s reported. The video game retailer’s after-hours surge added to a 93 percent jump during Tuesday’s trading session, with the stock propelled by traders on WallStreetBets, many of them buying volatile call options. “This is certainly on my radar,” Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Galvin told the magazine. “I’m concerned because it suggests that there is something systemically wrong with the options trading on this stock.” GameStop stock surged 50 percent in extended trade after Elon Musk tweeted “Gamestonk!!” “Stonks” is a tongue-in-cheek term for stocks widely used on social media.
SINGAPORE
Foreign house buying falls
Foreigners snapping up private apartments declined to a 17-year low last year, as travel restrictions and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic deterred them from traveling to the city-state. Purchases of units fell to 742, real-estate consultancy firms ERA Realty Network and OrangeTee & Tie Pte said. That is the lowest since 2003, when non-permanent residents bought 671 units during the SARS epidemic. The figures are based on analysis of government data as of Tuesday that takes into account new, sub-sale and second-hand apartments. Non-permanent resident apartment purchases last year accounted for just 4.1 percent of total sales, the lowest in more than two decades, the data showed.
BANKING
Goldman slashes CEO pay
Goldman Sachs Group Inc cut the salary of CEO David Solomon for last year by US$10 million to US$17.5 million because of the bank’s role in the 1MDB Malaysian bribery scandal, documents filed on Tuesday showed. “The amounts of remuneration reflect the decision announced by the board of directors,” a securities filing that also detailed pay cuts for chief operating officer John Waldron and chief financial officer Stephen Scherr showed. While the three were not “aware of the firm’s participation in any illicit activity at the time the firm arranged the 1MDB bond transactions, the Board views the 1MDB matter as an institutional failure,” it said.
AUTOMAKERS
Volta to launch electric truck
Anglo-Swedish start-up Volta Trucks is to launch its urban electric truck this year, the group said yesterday, tapping into keen demand for electrified transport. Volta Trucks has developed what it bills as the world’s first purpose-built fully electric 16-tonne commercial vehicle that is designed to criss-cross cities for short journeys. The young firm, founded in Sweden in 2019, this week sealed a US$20 million investment to help boost production of the Volta Zero, which has a driving range of 150 to 200km.
RETAIL
Brewer to head Walgreens
US drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) on Tuesday named Starbucks Corp executive Roz Brewer as its new CEO — an appointment that US media said would make her the only black woman leading a Fortune 500 company. “Brewer brings to WBA a proven track record of leadership and operational expertise at multinational corporations,” WBA said in a statement, adding that outgoing CEO Stefano Pessina would become executive chairman of the board.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts