04/06/2025

BIZ & FINANCE WEDNESDAY | JUNE 4, 2025

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Japanese consumers scramble to grab cheap rice

Singapore hedge fund Arrowpoint capitalised on May market turmoil HONG KONG: Singapore’s multi-strategy hedge fund Arrowpoint Investment Partners has made gains by exploiting market dislocations triggered by global trade tariff shocks and sees more arbitrage opportunities ahead, its chief investment officer said. Since mid-April, the US$1.1 billion fund has capitalised on extreme dislocations in equities, currencies and bond curves, founder and CIO Jonathan Xiong told Reuters. May was the fund’s best month since its launch last July, up more than 3%, said a person familiar with the matter who declined to be identified. By comparison, multi-strategy hedge funds were on average flat in April, data from With Intelligence shows. Backed by Blackstone, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Temasek’s Seviora, Arrowpoint was Asia’s largest hedge fund startup last year. It now has around 110 staff with over 20 trading pods. Arrowpoint exploited dislocations in Asia FX markets using non-deliverable forwards and profited from Australian rate curve anomalies following Donald Trump’s tariff announcements, Xiong said. It was able to take advantage of temporary mispricing in asset prices, betting they would eventually revert to normal levels. “One thing I noticed is that Asia dislocations take much longer to come back as the market is less liquid compared to the US,” Xiong said. Arrowpoint, however, stayed clear of Japan’s rate markets, where super-long bond yields were driven to record highs in May. At the Sohn Hong Kong Investment Leaders Conference on Friday, Xiong pitched a long China/short Japan “risk parity” trade, which involves buying China stock index futures and five-year government bonds, while shorting similar Japanese assets. – Reuters Toyota to take private key unit in ¥3.7 trillion deal TOKYO: Toyota Motor will take private a key supplier of its group, it said yesterday, marking a landmark repositioning of Japan’s most important corporation. Under the terms of the deal, unlisted real estate firm Toyota Fudosan will launch a tender offer for shares of Toyota Industries for ¥3.7 trillion (RM110 billion), the companies said. Separately, Toyota said it plans to buy back its own shares from Toyota Industries. Japanese firms have come under scrutiny from the market regulator and investors in recent years about their cross-shareholdings in affiliates and business partners, sparking a rise in both management buyouts and acquisitions. Toyota owned 24% of Toyota Industries as of September last year, while Toyota Industries held 9% of the world’s biggest automaker and more than 5% of Denso, another major Toyota supplier and Toyota group company. In addition to forklifts, Toyota Industries manufactures the RAV4 sport utility vehicle for Toyota and also produces car parts such as engines, air-conditioning compressors and batteries. – Reuters

artificially cheap stockpiled rice would affect the price of single-origin “brand” rice and other products. Rice production is expected to rise for the 2025 harvest year. As homegrown rice prices soared, demand for cheaper, foreign-made rice has also surged, even after the hefty levy Japan imposes to protect producers of its staple rice, beyond the tariff-free “minimum access” quota. Private rice imports, while still tiny, quadrupled in the first 11 months of fiscal 2024 to just under 1,500 metric tonnes. Japan’s fiscal year runs from April to March. Official data for the past few months is not yet available, but the Japan Agricultural News reported that private imports surged to more than 6,800 tonnes in April alone. – Reuters

Average supermarket prices fell for the first time in three weeks in the seven days to May 25, but only by ¥25 to average ¥4,260/5 kg, showing limited impact from the release of stockpiled rice under the previous auction system involving several layers of wholesalers. Farm Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, who scrapped that system upon taking his post on May 21, said the government could also consider buying back rice from wholesalers that had participated in those auctions since March, potentially bringing more of the staple grain to market at lower prices. He repeated that the government stood ready to release all of its stockpile if necessary. “If we let rice prices remain high, (store) shelves will be filled with imported rice,” he said. It remains to be seen how the

Those products started hitting some store shelves at the weekend, when hundreds of people waited in line for hours at retailers such as Ito-Yokado and Aeon despite being allowed just one bag per household. The doubling in rice prices since last year, partly due to extreme heat impacting production, has become a major concern for voters and policymakers ahead of two key elections – for the Tokyo metropolitan assembly on June 22 and Parliament’s upper house in July. “I never thought the price of stockpiled rice would fall this low,” said 75-year-old Kazumi Uchida as she waited in line at an Ito-Yokado store in Tokyo on a rainy Saturday. “I’m almost out of rice and was shifting to eat more bread and noodles.”

TOKYO: Japan’s farm minister said yesterday the government stood ready to offer more stockpiled rice as consumers formed long queues to snatch up cheap, emergency-use grain made available through some retailers since the weekend. In an abrupt change of policy, the government last week began selling stockpiled rice directly to retailers, aiming to get a 5kg bag to consumers for around ¥2,000 (RM59) – less than half of average prices. o Queues form at retailers for limited bags, govt ready to release more

TSMC forecasts record profit on soaring AI demand TAIPEI: Taiwanese chip titan TSMC said yesterday that it expected to see record earnings this year as it increased semiconductor production capacity to meet soaring demand for AI technology. Taiwan Semiconductor

Manufacturing Company is the world’s largest contract chipmaker and counts Nvidia and Apple among its clients. While US tariffs have had “some” indirect impact on the firm, chairman and chief executive CC Wei said the artificial intelligence business would remain “very strong”. “Our revenue and profit this year will set new historical highs,“ he told the company’s annual shareholders meeting. With AI demand “very high”, the company was trying to “increase production capacity to satisfy our customers”, Wei said. But he denied reports that the company was planning to build factories in the Middle East. TSMC has been under pressure for years to move more of its production away from Taiwan, where the bulk of its fabrication plants are located, amid worries about China. Beijing claims the island is part of its territory and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control. The chip firm has in recent years broken ground for plants in the United States, Europe and Japan. Bloomberg News, citing unnamed sources, reported last week that it was considering building an advanced facility in the United Arab Emirates. “I think rumours are really flying everywhere,” Wei said. TSMC last month reported sales of NT$349.6 billion (RM49 billion) for April, a rise of 48.1% from a year earlier and up 22.2% from March. The surge came after US President Donald Trump’s global tariff blitz spurred companies to stock up, owing to fears that higher levies were in the pipeline. Wei told shareholders that TSMC’s

Wei answering questions during the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu yesterday. – AFPPIC

business “may be affected” if tariffs force up prices and demand for chips falls, but he added: “Our business will still be very good.” “I am not afraid of anything, I am

only afraid that the world economy will decline,“ he added. TSMC has been in the crosshairs of Trump, who has accused Taiwan of stealing the US chip industry.

Trump imposed a 32% duty on imports from the island as part of his sweeping tariffs – which were later paused for 90 days – but excluded semiconductors. – AFP