CHINA
Industrial profit growth dips
Profit growth at China’s industrial companies last month slowed to the weakest in more than one year as still-high commodity prices continued to hit profitability. Industrial profit growth last month decelerated to 9 percent from a year earlier, the slowest pace since May last year, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. For the first 11 months of the year, profits climbed 38 percent from a year earlier, it said. While profits of coal miners and crude oil suppliers increased more than 200 percent in the first 11 months, as commodity prices soared, that has undermined the position of companies that use these products, with electricity and heating producers having profits decline worse than in the same period last year.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Binance gets Bahrain nod
Binance Holdings Ltd (幣安) received in-principle approval from the Bahraini Central Bank to be a crypto-asset service provider in the kingdom, the company said in a statement yesterday. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, still needs to complete the full application process, chief executive officer Zhao Changpeng (趙長鵬) wrote in an e-mail to Bloomberg News. That would be completed “in due course,” Zhao added. If successful, it would mark the first regulatory approval for a Binance entity in the Middle East or North Africa.
TURKEY
Lira plummets nearly 8%
The lira yesterday tumbled almost 8 percent against the US dollar amid persisting investor concern over Turkey’s monetary policy, having surged more than 50 percent last week after billions of dollars of state-backed market interventions. Yesterday, the lira weakened to as low as 11.6 against the US dollar before trimming losses to trade at 11.35 by 11am in Ankara. At current levels, the currency is 35 percent weaker than at the end of last year. Under pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the central bank has slashed its policy rates by 500 basis points to 14 percent since September, despite inflation that has risen to more than 21 percent.
BANKING
Starling seeks lending unit
Digital-only start-up Starling Bank Ltd is on the hunt for a lending business to buy before its UK stock market debut, the Daily Mail reported, citing the bank’s founder and chief executive officer Anne Boden. Boden told the paper that the bank aims to acquire at least one lending platform in the first half of next year. Starling has made one such acquisition, buying Fleet Mortgages Ltd in July. “We’re likely to do one or more similar acquisitions in the same sort of model,” Boden said.
GLOBAL ECONOMY
Global GDP to top US$100tn
The world economy is next year to surpass US$100 trillion for the first time, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said, adding that the milestone is arriving two years earlier than previously forecast. Global GDP is to be lifted by the continued recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, although if inflation persists it might be difficult for policymakers to avoid tipping their economies back into recession, the London-based think tank said. “The important issue for the 2020s is how the world economies cope with inflation,” CEBR deputy chairman Douglas McWilliams said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last