Alibaba opens third data centre in Malaysia
The Hangzhou-based company's cloud unit launched its third data centre in Malaysia this week and it also plans to open its second data centre in the Philippines in October, it said in a statement released yesterday.
Alibaba Cloud also said it's launching a global competency centre in Singapore to help accelerate AI adoption across industries.
It said the centre would help more than 5,000 businesses and 100,000 developers access advanced AI models. — Bloomberg
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The Star
an hour ago
- The Star
Microsoft makes deep job cuts across Xbox division, cancels games
Microsoft Corp's gaming division laid off hundreds of employees on July 2, part of a broader culling at the software company as it seeks to control costs. An Xbox spokesperson declined to confirm how many people were impacted, but the cuts were widespread and significant. Subsidiaries across the gaming organisation were told that they would be affected by the layoffs. Microsoft's Stockholm-based King division, which makes Candy Crush, is cutting 10% of its staff, or about 200 jobs, according to people familiar with the plans. Other European offices, such as ZeniMax, also began cutting employees early Wednesday, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the press. News of further job cuts trickled out slowly as other units of Microsoft Gaming, such as Call Of Duty studios Raven Software and Sledgehammer Games as well as Halo Studios and Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 Studios, also announced workforce reductions, according to the people familiar. The company canceled several projects that had been in development for years, including the fantasy game Everwild, in development at UK-based Rare Studio, and an original new online game from ZeniMax Online Studios, the maker of The Elder Scrolls Online. Both of those studios will cut jobs as a result of the cancellations, according to the people. Xbox also cancelled the planned reboot Perfect Dark and shuttered The Initiative, one of the studios behind it. In an email to staff, Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty said that the studio shutdown and project cancellations "reflect a broader effort to adjust priorities and focus resources to set up our teams for greater success within a changing industry landscape.' Microsoft announced July 2 that it's eliminating 9,000 workers companywide in its second wave of layoffs this year. The cuts will have an impact across teams, geographies and tenure, and are being made in an effort to streamline processes and reduce layers of management, a company spokesperson said. The terminations follow an earlier round of 6,000 job cuts in May that fell hardest on product and engineering positions. The company's gaming units were expected to be told throughout the day how many jobs would be cut at each office. The division had about 20,000 employees as of January 2024. "To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft's lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness,' Microsoft Gaming chief executive officer Phil Spencer said in an email to staff seen by Bloomberg News. Spencer didn't share specific numbers but said that impacted employees will be "given priority review' if they apply to open jobs elsewhere within the company. He wrote that Microsoft's "platform, hardware, and game roadmap have never looked stronger,' but that "we must make choices now for continued success in future years and a key part of that strategy is the discipline to prioritize the strongest opportunities.' Employees at Xbox had been bracing for the job cuts since May, when Microsoft began conducting companywide layoffs and speculation mounted that the gaming division might be impacted. This is the fourth mass layoff at Xbox in the last 18 months. The gaming division has been under pressure to boost profit margins since Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard for US$69bil (RM291.11bil) in a deal that closed in October 2023. – Bloomberg
New Straits Times
an hour ago
- New Straits Times
Japan's yen is a compelling trade but comes at a cost
SINGAPORE: Global investors are unwinding their wagers on Japan's yen rising quickly as a cautious central bank, a trade war and the prohibitive cost of holding the currency sour one of the year's most popular trades. Most analysts and real money investors remain convinced the yen will eventually appreciate as Japan shifts away from ultra-low rates. But pitted against this conviction are short-term headwinds, including the lack of progress on a trade deal with the United States and uncertainty surrounding Japanese national elections. Monetary policy has become the yen's biggest sticking point after the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has hinted it is loath to raise rates again this year, having done so in January, before it can gauge the full impact of US President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs. James Athey, London-based fixed income manager at Marlborough, has reduced his long yen positions versus the dollar because he sees short-term positioning in the currency and the BOJ's "intransigence" as headwinds. "Ultimately we do still see numerous long-term tailwinds for the yen, it's just about managing the journey amongst this uncertainty and volatility," he said. Investors still hold net long positions in the yen worth US$11.41 billion, although that's drastically lower than the record US$15.70 billion at the end of April, weekly data from the US markets regulator showed. By virtue of low Japanese yields and huge offshore investments, the yen has historically been sensitive to overseas interest rates. The yawning gap between the US and Japanese interest rates in the past few years had driven the yen to record lows, prompting costly interventions from Tokyo. That gap also makes owning the yen, whose bonds pay 0.50 per cent on average, using US dollars that cost upwards of 4.00 per cent, an expensive proposition for investors. If the yen depreciates, it's a double-whammy. Bo Zhuang, global macro strategist for Loomis Sayles, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers, said investors expected at the beginning of the year the long yen trade would work well over three to six months. "But now it's about 'oh well, maybe it will last more than that' and the cost of holding such a position might be too high for them to recover." Shifting expectations At the start of 2025, market expectations were for Japan to raise rates quickly and for the US Federal Reserve to start cutting rates later in the year. Yen buyers were rewarded when Trump's sweeping trade tariffs in April jolted markets, shook investors' faith in the US dollar and caused a swift 9 per cent rise in the yen from levels near 160 per dollar, its strongest first-half performance since 2016. But the yen has been meandering since then as the BOJ turned cautious. "The trade faces a negative carry because of the interest rate differential and needs to be actively managed," said Matthias Scheiber, senior portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, who reduced his long yen position. But Scheiber reckons any sell-off in yen is an opportunity to buy it. "We still like the trade, despite the fact that over the last couple of weeks, it was basically trading flat," said Scheiber, who is also the head of the multi-asset solutions team at Allspring. In the derivatives market too, options betting on a higher yen cost more, in a sign of bullishness on the currency. Interest in low-cost yen options that deliver outsized payoffs if the currency strengthens sharply has jumped. The yen's trajectory will heavily depend on where US duties end up after Trump this week cast doubt over a possible deal with Japan. He also suggested a tariff of 30 per cent or 35 per cent on imports from Japan — well above the previous 24 per cent tariff rate. A high tariff rate will stifle Japan's major auto exports and make the BOJ's path towards shifting away from decades of ultra-low rates even more perilous. "I think the yen is waiting for catalyst in terms of how the US-Japan trade negotiations go because I think that's a roadblock for policymakers," said Moh Siong Sim, currency strategist at Bank of Singapore.
New Straits Times
an hour ago
- New Straits Times
US-Vietnam trade deal sows new China uncertainty
HANOI: Vietnam's trade deal with the United States averts the most punishing of Donald Trump's "reciprocal" levies, but analysts warned it could provoke a fresh standoff between Washington and Beijing. The Southeast Asian nation has the third-biggest trade surplus with the United States of any country after China and Mexico, and was targeted with one of the highest rates in the US president's "Liberation Day" tariff blitz on April 2. The deal announced Wednesday is the first full pact Trump has sealed with an Asian nation, and analysts say it may give a glimpse of the template Washington will use with other countries still scrambling for accords. The 46 per cent rate due to take effect next week has been averted, with Vietnam set to face a minimum 20 per cent tariff in return for opening its market to US products including cars. But a 40 per cent tariff will hit goods passing through the country to circumvent steeper trade barriers — a practice called "transshipping". Washington has accused Hanoi of relabelling Chinese goods to skirt its tariffs, but raw materials from the world's number two economy are the lifeblood of Vietnam's manufacturing industries. "From a global perspective, perhaps the most interesting point is that this deal again seems in large part to be about China," said Capital Economics. It said the terms on transshipment "will be seen as a provocation in Beijing, particularly if similar conditions are included in any other deals agreed over coming days". Shares in clothing companies and sports equipment manufacturers — which have a large footprint in Vietnam — rose on news of the deal in New York. But they later declined sharply as details were released. "This is a much better outcome than a flat 46 per cent tariff, but I wouldn't celebrate just yet," said Hanoi-based Dan Martin of Asian business advisory firm Dezan Shira & Associates. "Everything now depends on how the US decides to interpret and enforce the idea of transshipment," he added. "If the US takes a broader view and starts questioning products that use foreign parts, even when value is genuinely added in Vietnam, it could end up affecting a lot of companies that are playing by the rules." Vietnam's government said in a statement late on Wednesday that under the deal the country had promised "preferential market access for US goods, including large-engine cars". But the statement gave scant detail about the transshipment arrangements in the deal, which Trump announced on his Truth Social platform. Bloomberg Economics forecast Vietnam could lose a quarter of its exports to the United States in the medium term, endangering more than two per cent of its gross domestic product as a result of the agreement. Uncertainty over how transshipping will be "defined or enforced" is likely to have diplomatic repercussions, said Bloomberg Economics expert Rana Sajedi. "The looming question now is how China will respond," she said. "Beijing has made clear that it would respond to deals that came at the expense of Chinese interests." "The decision to agree to a higher tariff on goods deemed to be 'transshipped' through Vietnam may fall in that category," added Sajedi.
