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.
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
Servers that might contain artificial intelligence (AI)-powering Nvidia Corp chips shipped from the US to Singapore ended up in Malaysia, but their actual final destination remains a mystery, Singaporean Minister for Home Affairs and Law K Shanmugam said yesterday. The US is cracking down on exports of advanced semiconductors to China, seeking to retain a competitive edge over the technology. However, Bloomberg News reported in late January that US officials were probing whether Chinese AI firm DeepSeek (深度求索) bought advanced Nvidia semiconductors through third parties in Singapore, skirting Washington’s restrictions. Shanmugam said the route of the chips emerged in the course of an
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