■ BANKING
Eximbank selling stake
Vietnam’s state-owned Export-Import Commercial Joint-Stock Bank, known as Eximbank, will sell a 25 percent stake to four foreign investors, the central bank said yesterday. The Tuoi Tre newspaper placed the value of the shares at US$395 million. Eximbank will sell a 15 percent stake to Sumitomo Mitsui, the State Bank of Vietnam said in a statement on its Web site. VOF Investment Ltd of Virgin Islands will buy 5%, while Mirae Asset Exim Investment Ltd of South Korea will buy 4.5% and Mirae Asset Maps Opportunity Vietnam Equity Balanced Fund 1 will buy a 0.5% stake, the statement said.
■ INTERNET
Yahoo action questioned
A shareholder accused Yahoo Inc of trying to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company’s board improperly thwarted Microsoft Corp’s US$47.5 billion takeover offer. In a letter sent on Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware, shareholder attorney Joel Friedlander argued Yahoo was trying “to whitewash embarrassing documents” because the company thought the information would damage the board’s efforts to repel a challenge by activist investor Carl Icahn. The redacted documents include information about an employee severance plan that Yahoo adopted shortly after Microsoft made its initial bid on Jan. 31 and notes about a conversation between Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, he wrote.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Toyota to resume work
Toyota Motor Corp will resume limited production at its plant in Chengdu, China, for the first time in a week after the country’s biggest earthquake in 58 years. The company will cancel one of two daily shifts from tomorrow through Saturday at its plant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, spokeswoman Hiromi Hirooka said by telephone last night. Toyota lost production of 380 vehicles as of Friday. The plant can build 13,000 vehicles a year. “Our primary concern is the health condition of workers at our factory and suppliers,” Hirooka said.
■ BEVERAGES
California wine pioneer dies
Robert Mondavi, who pioneered the rise of California wines, died on Friday at his home in the Napa Valley region that made him famous. Mondavi had become increasingly frail in recent years and died peacefully at his home, a family spokesman said. The son of Italian immigrants, Mondavi was the first wine-=maker to successfully challenge the dominance of European wines and establish Napa Valley as one of the world’s premier wine regions. He founded his own vineyard Robert Mondavi Winery in 1966, at the age of 52, after being kicked out of his family-owned winery. Using new techniques and employing adventurous young winemakers, Mondavi’s cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay won at the famous Paris tasting of 1976.
■ VIETNAM
Bank to raise interest rates
The central bank said yesterday that it would raise its benchmark interest rate, lifting the maximum return that commercial banks can offer depositors to 18 percent a year. The State Bank of Vietnam will increase the base rate to 12 percent from 8.75 percent tomorrow, according to a statement released in Hanoi yesterday. Under central bank regulations, banks cannot offer savers rates exceeding 150 percent of the base rate.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San