COSMETICS
Shiseido discusses sale
Shiseido Co is in advanced talks to sell its shampoo and affordable skincare business to CVC Capital Partners for ￥150 billion to ￥200 billion (US$1.45 billion to US$1.93 billion), as the Japanese cosmetics maker shifts its focus to premium beauty products, people with knowledge of the matter said. The board of Shiseido is preparing to vote on the divestment soon, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. The operations targeted for sale includes the company’s Tsubaki haircare products. The unit is mainly active in Japan, China and other parts of Asia. The lifestyle and personal care business represented about a 10th of Shiseido’s revenue in 2019, with annual sales of about ￥100 billion.
UNITED KINGDOM
Retail misses expectations
Retail sales rose less than expected last month, adding to evidence that a succession of lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic is dragging down the economy. Sales in shops and online edged up 0.3 percent after declining in November last year, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. That is a percentage point less than economists had expected. Sales rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier. The report casts doubt about the resilience of the economy during a third round of restrictions that started this month. While the lockdowns might be distorting the seasonal adjustment of the figures, last month and the holiday shopping season are nevertheless crucial for retailers. Clothing sales rose sharply last month, while supermarkets and department stores declined. The drop in retail sales would knock 0.02 percentage point off overall output in the fourth quarter, the office said.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Cryptos won’t work: UBS
Cryptocurrencies might never be able to work as actual currencies, UBS Global Wealth Management (GWM) said. The “fundamental flaw” inherent in cryptocurrencies is that supply cannot be reduced when demand is slumping in most cases, UBS GWM chief economist Paul Donovan said in a video this week. That means they cannot be considered currencies, he said. A “proper currency,” as Donovan termed it, can be a stable store of value, providing certainty that it will be able to buy the same basket of goods tomorrow as it buys today. That confidence is derived from central banks’ ability to reduce supply when demand is falling. There is no such mechanism for switching off supply on most cryptocurrencies, and therefore their value can slide — leading to a collapse in spending power, he said.
AUTOMAKERS
Batteries give Nissan edge
Nissan Motor Co has emerged from Brexit with an edge over rivals that lack a UK battery supply chain, a big relief for the nation’s largest auto manufacturing plant. The maker of packs that power the Leaf electric vehicles built at Nissan’s massive factory in Sunderland, England, is to add production of a longer-range battery in the coming months, Nissan chief operating officer Ashwani Gupta said on Thursday. The supplier investment is the latest development for the Nissan facility, which employs about 6,000 people and faced existential risks without a Brexit trade agreement. However, CEO Carlos Tavares said that while good sense had prevailed with regard to Brexit, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to ban gasoline and diesel cars from 2030 could be problematic.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
GREAT SUCCESS: Republican Senator Todd Young expressed surprise at Trump’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running US lawmakers who helped secure billions of dollars in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing rejected US President Donald Trump’s call to revoke the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, signaling that any repeal effort in the US Congress would fall short. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the law, on Wednesday said that Trump’s demand would fail, while a top Republican proponent, US Senator Todd Young, expressed surprise at the president’s comments and said he expects the administration to keep the program running. The CHIPS Act is “essential for America leading the world in tech, leading the world in AI [artificial
REACTIONS: While most analysts were positive about TSMC’s investment, one said the US expansion could disrupt the company’s supply-demand balance Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) new US$100 billion investment in the US would exert a positive effect on the chipmaker’s revenue in the medium term on the back of booming artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from US chip designers, an International Data Corp (IDC) analyst said yesterday. “This is good for TSMC in terms of business expansion, as its major clients for advanced chips are US chip designers,” IDC senior semiconductor research manager Galen Zeng (曾冠瑋) said by telephone yesterday. “Besides, those US companies all consider supply chain resilience a business imperative,” Zeng said. That meant local supply would
BIG INVESTMENT: Hon Hai is building the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said The construction of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co’s (鴻海精密) massive artificial intelligence (AI) server plant near Guadalajara, Mexico, would be completed in a year despite the threat of new tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus said. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), is investing about US$900 million in what would become the world’s largest assembly plant for servers based on Nvidia Corp’s state-of-the-art GB200 AI chips, Lemus said. The project consists of two phases: the expansion of an existing Hon Hai facility in the municipality of El Salto, and the construction of a
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