GERMANY
Business morale weaker
Business morale worsened for the second consecutive month this month, a survey showed yesterday, indicating that Europe’s largest economy faces an uphill battle to shake off recession. The Ifo institute said its business climate index stood at 88.5 following a reading of 91.5 last month. A Reuters poll of analysts had predicted a fall to 90.7. “Sentiment in the German economy has clouded over noticeably,” Ifo president Clemens Fuest said. Expectations were significantly more pessimistic, falling to 83.6 this month from 88.3 last month. Companies also assessed their current situation more poorly, with the sentiment evaluating current conditions falling to 93.7 from 94.8.
SINGAPORE
Factory output slumps
Industrial output has fallen the most since November 2019, as the electronics segment continued to be the main drag on growth. Factory output last month declined 10.8 percent from a year earlier, worse than the 7.3 percent drop predicted in a Bloomberg survey, marking the eighth straight month of contraction. Production of electronics, which accounts for the largest weight in the city-state’s export-driven manufacturing sector, plunged 23 percent year-on-year, with semiconductors seeing the cluster’s worst drop. The chemicals industry saw output drop 9.5 percent, while the biomedical sector grew 4.4 percent.
E-COMMERCE
JD.com sets up retail arm
JD.com Inc (京東) is to create an independent unit by merging its 7Fresh (七鮮) supermarket chain with other online services, establishing a retailer of fresh food and groceries that serves millions nationwide. China’s No. 2 e-commerce company plans to set up what it called an “Innovative Retail” operation that includes 7Fresh supermarkets, group-buying platform Pinpin (拼拼), as well as on-demand services, a person familiar with the matter said. Yan Xiaobing (閆小兵), the former head of JD.com’s international business, is to lead the unit effective yesterday and report directly to JD.com chief executive Sandy Xu (許冉), the person said.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Binance market share falls
Binance Holdings Ltd (幣安) is reeling under the impact of increased regulatory scrutiny, with the exchange platform’s market share languishing near a one-year low, data from research firm Kaiko showed. Binance’s spot trading market share was little changed at 56 percent through yesterday from each of the two months prior, Kaiko data showed. That is the lowest since August last year after the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against the firm and its founder Zhao Changpeng (趙長鵬) on June 5. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange saw its daily market share plunge to as low as 47 percent on April 6, just after a separate lawsuit from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
PROPERTY
SBB eyes Brookfield deal
Sweden’s Samhallsbyggnadsbolaget i Norden AB (SBB) has entered into exclusive discussions with Brookfield Asset Management Inc to sell its remaining 51 percent stake in a subsidiary as the troubled landlord seeks to pay off debt. SBB started talks to sell the stake in SBB EduCo AB and repay an intercompany loan of 14.5 billion kronor (US$1.35 billion) from EduCo to SBB after “having recently received an expression of interest from Brookfield,” the firm said in a statement on Sunday. SBB is struggling to manage an US$8 billion debt pile.
Semiconductor business between Taiwan and the US is a “win-win” model for both sides given the high level of complementarity, the government said yesterday responding to tariff threats from US President Donald Trump. Home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), Taiwan is a key link in the global technology supply chain for companies such as Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp. Trump said on Monday he plans to impose tariffs on imported chips, pharmaceuticals and steel in an effort to get the producers to make them in the US. “Taiwan and the US semiconductor and other technology industries
SMALL AND EFFICIENT: The Chinese AI app’s initial success has spurred worries in the US that its tech giants’ massive AI spending needs re-evaluation, a market strategist said Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) eponymous AI assistant rocketed to the top of Apple Inc’s iPhone download charts, stirring doubts in Silicon Valley about the strength of the US’ technological dominance. The app’s underlying AI model is widely seen as competitive with OpenAI and Meta Platforms Inc’s latest. Its claim that it cost much less to train and develop triggered share moves across Asia’s supply chain. Chinese tech firms linked to DeepSeek, such as Iflytek Co (科大訊飛), surged yesterday, while chipmaking tool makers like Advantest Corp slumped on the potential threat to demand for Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators. US stock
SUBSIDIES: The nominee for commerce secretary indicated the Trump administration wants to put its stamp on the plan, but not unravel it entirely US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency in charge of a US$52 billion semiconductor subsidy program declined to give it unqualified support, raising questions about the disbursement of funds to companies like Intel Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). “I can’t say that I can honor something I haven’t read,” Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, said of the binding CHIPS and Science Act awards in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday. “To the extent monies have been disbursed, I would commit to rigorously enforcing documents that have been signed by those companies to make sure we get
UNUSUAL TIMING: The success of DeepSeek has prompted a scramble among its domestic competitors to upgrade their own AI models Chinese technology company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) yesterday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence (AI) model that it said surpassed the highly acclaimed DeepSeek-V3. The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max’s release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition. “Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms ... almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” Alibaba’s cloud unit said in
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