AUSTRALIA
Retail sales edge up 0.6%
Retail sales climbed for an eighth straight month last month, indicating that the nation’s cashed-up households are coping well with rapid interest rate increases to tackle inflation. Sales advanced 0.6 percent from July, Bureau of Statistics data showed yesterday. The rise was driven by “the combined increase in food related industries, with cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services up,” said Ben Dorber, head of retail statistics at the bureau. Department store sales rose to a new record, while household goods retailing had its largest increase since March.
THAILAND
BOT raises rate again
The Bank of Thailand (BOT) yesterday increased the benchmark policy rate for the second straight meeting to tame the fastest inflation in 14 years and shore up the battered baht. The bank’s monetary policy committee voted to unanimously raise the one-day repurchase rate by 25 basis points to 1 percent, as forecast by 18 of 23 economists in a Bloomberg survey, with the rest predicting a hike of 50 basis points. Even after yesterday’s move, the BOT continues to be among the least hawkish in Asia, where many counterparts — including India and the Philippines — moved early and aggressively to tighten policy amid high inflation and weakening currencies.
GERMANY
Consumer confidence dips
Consumer confidence remains on a record downward slide, as Europe’s largest economy faces soaring inflation and an energy crisis heading into winter, a key survey showed yesterday. GfK’s forward-looking barometer fell to minus-42.5 points for next month, hitting a record low for the fourth month in a row, following a revised reading for this month of minus-36.8 points. “The currently very high inflation rates of almost 8 percent are leading to large real income losses among consumers and thus to a significant reduction in purchasing power,” GfK consumer expert Rolf Buerkl said.
TOYS
Lego sales rise 17%
Lego A/S yesterday posted double-digit sales growth in the first half of the year, driven by new openings and robust demand for its colorful plastic bricks, despite rising costs and inflation hitting consumers. The family-owned company said it had outpaced the toy industry in all major markets during the first six months of the year, when revenue increased 17 percent to 27 billion Danish kroner (US$3.47 billion). Operating profit for the period was steady from last year at 7.9 billion kroner. The Danish company opened 66 new stores in the six-month period, of which 43 were in China, bringing the total number of Lego branded stores to 833 worldwide.
AVIATION
SATS to acquire WFS
SATS Ltd, a catering and gateway services provider, has agreed to acquire air cargo handler Worldwide Flight Services (WFS) at an enterprise value of 2.25 billion euros (US$2.15 billion). The Singapore-listed firm is to pay about 1.2 billion euros in cash for WFS, it said in a statement yesterday. The deal is to be financed with a S$1.7 billion (US$1.17 billion) equity fund raising, with the balance coming from internal cash resources, SATS said. The acquisition is expected to close in March next year. Temasek Holdings Pte, which owns about a 39.7 percent stake in SATS, has agreed to vote in favor of the acquisition.
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
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