ENERGY
Oil highest since 2014
Oil jumped to the highest in more than six years after a bitter fight between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates plunged OPEC+ into crisis and blocked a supply increase. West Texas Intermediate crude advanced to US$76.98 a barrel, the highest since November 2014, as the breakdown in cartel talks left the market without the extra supplies for next month it had been counting on. Major consumers were paying attention to the cartel’s failure, and the administration of US President Joe Biden urged the group to get its act together. The White House is “closely monitoring the OPEC+ negotiations and their impact on the global economic recovery,” a spokesperson said.
BANKING
Sumitomo to buy stake
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc is to buy a 74.9 percent stake in Fullerton India Credit Co for about US$2 billion, marking the first entry into the South Asian country’s retail financial business by a Japanese bank. Japan’s second-largest lender would eventually acquire the rest of the Indian credit firm from Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte, it said in a statement Tuesday. With the acquisition, Fullerton India would become a consolidated subsidiary of Sumitomo Mitsui, it said in a separate statement. Fullerton Financial is a unit of Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek Holdings Pte.
SINGAPORE
Suspect’s bail increased
A court has tightened bail conditions for a businessman accused of involvement in a bogus, billion-dollar nickel trading scheme after the prosecution said plans were afoot to help him flee the city-state. Ng Yu Zhi (黃有志), a former managing director of trading companies Envy Global Trading Pte Ltd and an inactive firm, Envy Asset Management Pte Ltd, has been implicated by authorities in a fraudulent scheme that raised at least S$1.5 billion (US$1.12 billion) from investors. Ng’s bail was increased to S$4 million from the previous S$1.5 million, court proceedings showed on Monday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Firm to rent out apartments
John Lewis Partnership PLC, whose department stores have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, is to rent out thousands of new homes to be built on its plots. The company announced over the weekend that about 10,000 new apartments and houses would be built mostly on sites housing John Lewis department stores, Waitrose supermarkets and distribution centers, beginning in southeast England. The plan would “provide a stable, long term income for the Partnership,” executive director of strategy and commercial development Nina Bhatia said. The group wants to address a national housing shortage in the country, she said.
GERMANY
Industrial orders plummet
Industrial orders fell sharply in May, hit by weak demand from abroad as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pummel Europe’s top economy, official data showed yesterday. Orders were down by 3.7 percent, the federal statistics office Destatis said, dashing the hopes of analysts polled by Factset who had penciled in a rise of 0.8 percent from April. International orders in May sank particularly sharply, by 2.3 percent from eurozone countries and 9.3 percent from the rest of the world, data showed. The economy shrank in the first quarter of this year as restrictions were imposed to counter a winter surge in COVID-19 cases.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
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