CHINA
Factory gate prices rise
Factory gate prices last month rose at their fastest annual pace since July 2018, official data showed yesterday, as growth in the world’s second-largest economy continued to gather momentum. The producer price index rose 4.4 percent in annual terms, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement. This compared with a 1.7 percent rise in February. The consumer price index rose 0.4 percent from a year earlier last month, compared with a 0.2 percent decline in February, the bureau said in a separate statement.
GERMANY
Industrial production falls
Industrial production dropped for the second month in a row in February after eight months of gains as the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic began to bite, official data showed yesterday. Federal statistics agency Destatis said that industrial output declined 1.6 percent in February after a 2 percent fall the previous month, according to corrected data.
UNITED KINGDOM
House prices jump
House prices rose at the strongest pace in six months as buyers eyed a path out of lockdowns and the government extended a temporary tax break on purchases, mortgage lender Halifax said. The 1.1 percent increase followed no change in February and brought the annual pace of house price inflation to 6.5 percent. The average cost of a home rose to ￡254,606 (US$349,000). Last month, the Exchequer extended a holiday on stamp duty that was due to expire, leaving buyers eager to complete before the deadline.
FRANCE
Gradual repair planned
France would only gradually repair the damage to its public finances from the COVID-19 pandemic, avoiding austerity measures that would hurt economic growth, a long-term fiscal plan published late on Thursday showed. The budget deficit would not fall below 3 percent of GDP until 2027, the Ministry of Finance said. While progress could have been faster, targeting a drop below 3 percent in 2025, that would have involved major spending cuts and tax increases, an official at the ministry said.
FINTECH
Linklogis rises on debut
Linklogis Inc’s (聯易融科技) shares rose on its debut in Hong Kong, with the Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊)-backed company snapping a recent run of disappointing listings in the territory. Shares of the Shenzhen-based fintech firm closed 9.9 percent higher. Linklogis had priced its US$1.02 billion initial public offering near the midpoint of an indicative range at HK$17.58 per share, while the retail portion of its offering was 98.5 times subscribed by local investors. The firm offers digital services to help facilitate supply chain finance transactions in China.
TELECOMS
PCCW explores unit sale
PCCW Ltd (電訊盈科), a Hong Kong telecommunications, media and technology conglomerate controlled by billionaire Richard Li (李澤楷), is exploring a sale of its information technology and data centers unit, people familiar with the matter said. PCCW is working with a financial adviser as it evaluates a possible transaction that could value PCCW Solutions Ltd (電訊盈科企業方案) at more than US$1 billion, the people said. Prospective suitors including other telecom companies and private equity firms have expressed interest in acquiring all or part of the business, the people said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
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