JAPAN
Nikkei up 102% from 2020
The Nikkei 225 has doubled since its COVID-19 pandemic low as investors continue to rush into one of this year’s biggest stock rallies. The blue-chip equity gauge yesterday rose 1.5 percent, taking the gain from its March 2020 low to 102 percent. That is the best in the Asia-Pacific region in that span, after the more than 120 percent surge in India’s SENSEX. Stocks have soared in Tokyo this year on drivers including signs of stable inflation, corporate governance reforms and an inflow of foreign investment. These have supplemented tailwinds from the Bank of Japan’s easy-money policy and benefits from a weak yen for the nation’s exporters.
UNITED KINGDOM
GDP up after March drop
The economy bounced back in April as robust growth in the retail and creative industries sectors offset a slowdown in construction and manufacturing. GDP rose 0.2 percent after a 0.3 percent decline in March, when heavy rains and strikes kept consumers at home, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. The figures left the economy 0.3 percent bigger than before COVID-19 hit in 2020. The positive start to the second quarter reduces the risk of recession for now. However, bets that the Bank of England keeps raising interest rates through the summer to tame inflation are adding to the prospect of a downturn later in the year.
ENERGY
Oil demand peak in sight
Global oil demand could peak before the end of this decade as the energy crisis has accelerated the transition to cleaner technologies, the International Energy Agency said yesterday. The Paris-based agency forecast that annual demand growth would slow sharply over the next five years, from 2.4 million barrels per day this year to 400,000 barrels per day in 2028. “The shift to a clean energy economy is picking up pace, with a peak in global oil demand in sight before the end of this decade,” International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol said in a statement.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Samsung adds to staff leave
Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s biggest memorychip maker, is giving staff in South Korea one Friday off each month in a bid to retain talent that increasingly values flexible work. Starting next week, non-factory, full-time staff can take the day off in the period they get paychecks — usually the week of the 21st, a company spokesperson said yesterday. The arrangements are aimed at retaining talent, particularly among younger workers who value work-life balance. Millenials and Generation Z make up about three-quarters of Samsung’s workforce globally, a company report said last year.
GAMING
Judge blocks Microsoft deal
Microsoft Corp’s planned US$69 billion purchase of video game company Activision Blizzard Inc was blocked by a federal judge on Tuesday, giving more time for an antitrust review of the deal. US District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco ruled in support of a temporary restraining order sought by the US Federal Trade Commission that would stop Microsoft from closing the deal. The judge said her order temporarily blocking the deal “is necessary to maintain the status quo” while the commission’s legal cases against it are still pending.
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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