Product Spotlight - Arm Holdings - Malaysia gambles on a semiconductor deal

1. Malaysia has signed a strategic partnership with Arm Holdings, a UK-based chip architecture company, to acquire advanced semiconductor design blueprints for US$250m. The agreement, spread over ten years, includes training for 10,000 local engineers and aims to transition Malaysia’s dominant role in chip assembly and testing to high-value semiconductor design. 

2. While Malaysia will gain access to Arm’s blueprints and will be successful in manufacturing more higher-valued semiconductors, EIU believes that the country’s goal of creating its own designs will be challenging.

Smart City Espoo: Co-Creation, Innovation, and Sustainable Solutions

1. Espoo is Finland’s second biggest city. With close to 300,000 inhabitants, it is home to many education and research institutes as well as global corporations including Nokia. Interestingly, all Finnish unicorn startups have emerged in the city. Read more about what makes Espoo smart!

Korea Sees Unprecedented Wave of Small Business Closures

 1. In an online community of more than 1.8 million small business owners, a user in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, wrote on Friday: “Am I the only one whose business is falling apart?”

2. “The restaurant near my shop went out of business and has since been replaced by a rental space, and the walnut pastry store next to it also shut down,” the user continued. “This feels serious and unsettling.”

3. The post was soon flooded with sympathetic replies, including: “Business is so dead I can’t even think straight” and “I opened my chicken shop at 4 p.m. and only made 120,000 ($87) won by 8 p.m.”

4. These accounts from small business owners offer a vivid snapshot of the hardships many are enduring — struggles that are reflected in the data.

The implications of G7 agreement on the global minimum tax

 1. The G7 countries on 28 June reached a compromise on the global minimum corporate tax. The United States under President Trump had said it would withdraw from the international deal that provided for the tax, brokered in 2021 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and would levy a ‘revenge tax’ on countries applying the global minimum to US companies. The G7 agreement removes that threat for now, but at the price of a ‘side-by-side’ system in which US companies will be to some extent protected.

2. The agreement could be seen as a defeat for Europe and other G7 countries, which have conceded a carve out for American businesses. This concession rewards threats by the US and does not send a signal of power at a time when Europe and other economies face challenges from the US. However, it may contradict the expectations of those who thought the minimum tax would not survive President Trump’s second term.