RUSSIA
Investors quit with US$36bn
Foreign investors who left the country after selling their businesses in the year prior to March withdrew about US$36 billion from the country, state news agency RIA Novosti reported yesterday, citing analysis of data from the central bank. Scores of the world’s biggest companies have left or scaled back their operations in the country in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year. Last week, the central bank played down the effect of foreign company exits, saying that about 200 sale deals had been completed in the year through March, with just 20 percent involving large asset sales, or those in excess of US$100 million.
VIETNAM
Exports shrink for 4th month
Exports contracted for a fourth month this year, adding to risks of a growth slowdown in an economy already battling a crisis in the local property sector. Exports declined 5.9 percent and imports shrank 18.4 percent from a year earlier, data released by General Statistics Office in Hanoi said. While the drop in exports was slower than a 10.3 percent fall seen in a Bloomberg survey, the imports performed worse than expected. Headline inflation this month quickened 2.43 percent from a year earlier, the lowest level in 14 months, other data showed. Meanwhile, core inflation came in at 4.54 percent.
AIRLINES
Asia carriers boost ties
Singapore Airlines Ltd and PT Garuda Indonesia are seeking to deepen ties with a commercial pact to coordinate on fares and flight schedules, the carriers announced yesterday. Singapore’s flag carrier and Indonesia’s main airline said the arrangement, which expands on a memorandum of understanding the two signed in November 2021, would likely cover routes between Singapore and Denpasar in Bali, Jakarta, and Surabaya, a port city in Java. The arrangement also envisages the implementation of new initiatives, including joint fare products and corporate programs, they added.
AIRLINES
Go raises pay to save itself
Go Airlines India Ltd plans to raise salaries of captains by 100,000 rupees (US$1,210) a month and by 50,000 rupees for first officers as it tries to salvage its operations after filing for insolvency on May 2. The additional pay, which the airline calls a retention allowance, would come into effect on Thursday, according to an e-mail to pilots seen by Bloomberg News. It would also be offered to those who have left the company but are willing to withdraw their resignations by June 15. The airline said it would also soon reintroduce a “longevity bonus” for long-serving staff.
CEMENT
Firm fined over cave art risk
Norway’s wealth fund has placed an Indonesian state-controlled cement maker, in which it has a stake, under observation for three years for what it calls “risk of damage” from the firm’s activities to prehistoric cave paintings on Sulawesi island. A Semen Indonesia subsidiary operates a mine near 18 caves in South Sulawesi that house some of the world’s oldest paintings, said Norges Bank, which manages the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund Norges Bank Investment Management. “The background for the decision is unacceptable risk of damage on prehistoric and irreplaceable culture heritage,” Norges Bank said on Thursday.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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