CHINA
US firms cut investments
US businesses in China are slashing investments and lowering revenue projections as COVID-19 lockdowns affected operations and supply chains, a survey showed. More than half of the 121 companies polled by the American Chamber of Commerce in China have either reduced or delayed investment in the country, while nearly 60 percent of them lowered their income forecasts for this year following the latest virus outbreaks, a chamber statement said. More than 15 percent of the US companies with operations in Shanghai — which has been placed under lockdown for more than a month — reported their business there remains fully shut, the survey, conducted from April 29 to Thursday, showed. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents, who have operations throughout the country, said that production capabilities were slowed or reduced due to a lack of employees, difficulty in obtaining supplies or government-ordered lockdowns.
AIRLINES
Qantas expands points sales
Qantas Airways Ltd is making every seat on more than 1,700 flights purchasable with air miles, allowing customers to burn through a mountain of loyalty points built up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Passengers are to be able to use points on all flights in August on more than 30 routes in Australia, Qantas said yesterday. The almost 130,000 seats would be available on mostly regional routes from cities including Melbourne and Sydney. Airlines normally set aside only a certain number of seats for points redemptions, and offering every seat on so many flights is unusual. So-called points planes have emerged since COVID-19 as a way to tap pent-up travel demand among frequent flyers who accumulated air miles while stuck on the ground.
CARBON TRADING
Firm to trade offsets
A Singapore carbon exchange is teaming up with Germany’s main bourse to launch futures trading for carbon offsets as early as this year to meet the growing demand from companies to hedge their risks from greenhouse gas emissions. The futures contracts would be created by Deutsche Boerse AG using carbon credits sourced by Singapore-based AirCarbon Pte. The plan would be to trade the contracts on the European Energy Exchange, AirCarbon cofounder and chief executive officer Thomas McMahon said. BloombergNEF, a clean energy research group, estimates that the market for offsets could either skyrocket past US$100 billion or crumble if there are little improvements in quality.
MALAYSIA
IPO stream to stay strong
The pipeline for initial public offerings (IPOs) is likely to remain robust for the rest of the year, as excess cash buoys demand, the chief of the stock exchange operator said yesterday. “Our lead stream is strong, we have pent-up availability, the market support for IPOs this year has been very good,” Bursa Malaysia Bhd chief executive officer Muhamad Umar Swift said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “There is still a lot of liquidity in the Malaysian market chasing new offerings.” Malaysia topped its Southeast Asian peers in IPO proceeds raised in the first three months of this year, with five firms netting US$362 million through first-time share shares, Ernst & Young LLP said. Dairy producer Farm Fresh Bhd and its shareholders raised about 1 billion ringgit (US$228.1 million) in March in the nation’s largest IPO since July.
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
LIMITED MEASURES: The proposed restrictions on Chinese chip exports are weaker than previously considered, following lobbying by major US firms, sources said US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips to China that would escalate the US crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions, but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, said sources familiar with the matter. The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the sources, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they are published. The measures follow months of deliberations by US officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands, and
Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) yesterday said it expects any impact of new tariffs from US president-elect Donald Trump to hit the company less than its rivals, citing its global manufacturing footprint. Young Liu (劉揚偉), chairman of the contract manufacturer and key Apple Inc supplier, told reporters after a forum in Taipei that it saw the primary impact of any fresh tariffs falling on its clients because its business model is based on contract manufacturing. “Clients may decide to shift production locations, but looking at Foxconn’s global footprint, we are ahead. As a result, the impact on us is likely smaller compared to
TECH COMPETITION: The US restricted sales of two dozen types of manufacturing equipment and three software tools, and blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities US President Joe Biden’s administration unveiled new restrictions on China’s access to vital components for chips and artificial intelligence (AI), escalating a campaign to contain Beijing’s technological ambitions. The US Department of Commerce slapped additional curbs on the sale of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and chipmaking gear, including that produced by US firms at foreign facilities. It also blacklisted 140 more Chinese entities that it accused of acting on Beijing’s behalf, although it did not name them in an initial statement. Full details on the new sanctions and Entity List additions were to be published later yesterday, a US official said. The US “will
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