SWITZERLAND
Inflation below 2% target
Inflation slowed to below the 2 percent ceiling targeted by the Swiss National Bank, offering limited reassurance to officials who have already signaled further tightening is likely. Consumer prices last month rose 1.7 percent from a year earlier, down from 2.2 percent the previous month, as energy costs fell from a year earlier. Underlying inflation, which strips out such volatile elements, also slowed to 1.8 percent, the Federal Statistical Office said. The so-called gauge had already fallen below the central bank’s ceiling last month, while the headline number now shows the weakest pace of price growth since January last year.
SINGAPORE
Vice PM to lead central bank
Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) is to become chairman of the central bank, as well as the investment strategies committee of the sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte, separate statements said yesterday. Wong, who is also the city-state’s finance minister, is succeeding Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and GIC. His MAS appointment runs from Saturday to May 31, 2026, and his GIC role is effective Friday. Wong, broadly seen as the prime minister-in-waiting, has been deputy chairman of the MAS since June 2021. Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong (顏金勇) was named deputy chairman of the MAS.
CHINA
PBOC names CCP chief
Beijing has named Pan Gongsheng (潘功勝) as the central bank’s new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chief, putting him in line to be the next governor. The decision was made at a People’s Bank of China (PBOC) meeting of top cadres on Saturday, the central bank said in a statement. Pan, 59, is a deputy governor at the central bank with extensive experience in commercial banking. Pan replaces Guo Shuqing (郭樹清), who retired as party chief. Central bank Governor Yi Gang (易綱), who was Guo’s deputy, also retired from his party role, the statement said.
ACCOUNTING
PwC kicks out top partners
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) yesterday said that a raft of Australian senior partners would be forced to leave the company, as it battles to contain the fallout from a damaging tax leak scandal. The company, part of the Big Four accounting firms, named eight partners who had “enabled poor behaviors to persist with no accountability” — including former PwC Australian CEO Tom Seymour. “They are now being held accountable for their misconduct,” interim CEO Kristin Stubbins said. A total of 12 PwC partners have left the company since the leak came to light.
PROJECT PLANNING
Facilitate Corp sues Twitter
Australian project management firm Facilitate Corp has filed a lawsuit against Twitter Inc in a US court seeking cumulative payments of about A$1 million (US$665,940) over alleged non-payment of bills for work done in four countries, court filings showed. The Sydney-based private company on Thursday filed the suit in the US District Court for the Northern District Of California alleging breach of contract over Twitter’s failure to pay its invoices. Facilitate said it was seeking compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial, legal costs and interest at the maximum legal rate.
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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