NEW ZEALAND
Inflation at 32-year high
Inflation in the second quarter of this year rose to a 32-year high of 7.3 percent year-on-year, official figures released yesterday showed. The main drivers were rising fuel, food and housing costs, said Stats NZ, putting inflation at a level last seen in 1990. “Supply chain issues, labor costs, and higher demand have continued to push up the cost of building a new house,” said Jason Attewell of Stats NZ. Earlier this month, the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate to its highest level in six years and said further rises could follow.
INDIA
Growth forecast reduced
Morgan Stanley cut its forecast for the country’s annual growth to 7.2 percent for this year, as tighter financial conditions and a slowdown in global trade have pressured major economies around the world. The brokerage’s forecast, down from its previous projection of 7.6 percent, comes after the country’s economic growth slowed to the lowest in a year in the first three months of this year at 4.1 percent. The revised target is in line with the Reserve Bank of India’s view. For the next year, Morgan Stanley expects the annual GDP to touch 6.4 percent. The country’s annual consumer inflation, which touched multiyear highs in the past few months, eased marginally to 7.01 percent last month. The brokerage expects more respite ahead.
RETAIL
H&M to leave Russia
Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) is to start winding down its operations in Russia, having halted all sales in the country in March after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The Stockholm-based company expects to book costs of 2 billion kronor (US$190 million) from the process, of which about 1 billion kronor would have a cash-flow effect, it said in a statement. H&M’s Russian business accounted for about 4 percent of its 199 billion kronor in sales during the past financial year. The company has operated in the country since 2009.
MALAYSIA
7-Eleven might exit drugs
Convenience store operator 7-Eleven Malaysia Holdings Bhd is weighing exiting its pharmacy chain, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Kuala Lumpur-listed company is working with an adviser on the potential divestment of Caring Pharmacy Group Bhd, which is attracting interest from some Japanese parties, the people said. The company could seek a valuation for the retailer of about US$400 million in a deal, one of the people said. 7-Eleven Malaysia is the biggest 24-hour convenience store operator in the Southeast Asian nation. The company started offering franchising programs to local entrepreneurs in 2009 after the number of stores in its network crossed 1,000 the same year.
DELIVERY
Deliveroo cuts forecast
Deliveroo PLC slashed its projections for sales growth this year after the value of transactions on its platform grew more slowly in the latest quarter, reflecting an increasingly cautious view of economic performance and mounting challenges facing consumers. The London-based food delivery company said in a statement yesterday that gross transaction value (GTV) was projected to rise 4 to 12 percent this year, after previously forecasting growth of 15 to 25 percent. That reduction comes after GTV rose 2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter in constant currency, a slowdown compared with a 12 percent expansion in the first quarter.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
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