■INTERNET
Google’s market share up
Internet search giant Google slightly increased its share of the US search engine market last month, online researcher comScore Inc reported on Friday. The Virginia-based company said Google sites led the US search market with 63.5 percent of the searches conducted, a gain of 0.4 percentage points from October. The number of searches conducted on Yahoo sites fell 0.1 percentage points to 20.4 percent, comScore said. Searches on Microsoft sites fell 0.2 percentage points to 8.3 percent. ComScore said Americans made a total of 12.3 billion searches last month, a 3 percent decline from October, which had 31 days as opposed to 30.
■ENERGY
Petrobras postpones deal
Brazilian state oil company Petrobras has postponed finalizing a five-year investment plan amid “uncertainty and volatility” in world oil markets. Petroleo Brasileiro SA said its board of directors unanimously agreed on Friday to reevaluate existing projects and reconsider its spending plan for next year to 2013. Oil prices reached record highs in July and have since tanked more than 70 percent. That volatility has complicated the company’s efforts to forecast earnings and plan spending.
■VIDEO GAMES
Electronic Arts cuts jobs
Struggling US video game maker Electronic Arts Inc announced additional job cuts on Friday and said it would merge or close at least nine studios and publishing facilities. The Redwood City, California, company said it was cutting its worldwide workforce by 10 percent, or 1,000 jobs, an increase of 4 percent over the 6 percent workforce reduction announced in October. “The restructuring also calls for consolidation or closure of at least nine studio and publishing locations,” the publisher of popular titles such as Madden NFL 09, Spore and Warhammer Online said in a statement.
■FINANCE
Citic plan gets go-ahead
Shareholders of Citic Pacific Ltd (中信泰富), the Hong Kong arm of a Chinese government investment firm, approved a bailout from its parent company to cover losses from bad currency bets. A majority of independent shareholders voted in favor of a HK$11.6 billion loan (US$1.5 billion) provided by Beijing-based Citic Group, said a document filed to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late on Friday.
■JAPAN
Cabinet approves package
The Cabinet yesterday approved a ¥4.8 trillion (US$54 billion) second extra budget to finance a massive stimulus package, government officials said. Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Cabinet plans to submit the budget, for the year to March, to parliament early next year, the officials said. The budget, exceeding the ¥1.81 trillion first supplementary budget, is intended to fund cash handouts, a job-creation scheme and other economic measures in the ¥26.9 trillion stimulus package unveiled in October.
■LATVIA
Aid package under way
An aid package for Latvia being drawn up by the IMF and the European Commission will be ready on Friday, a source with knowledge of the talks said. The source did not know the size of the loan. The Diena newspaper said that according to its information the total loan would be worth US$10.47 billion. The loan is to come from the IMF, the commission and the Nordic countries, officials said.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
NEW PRODUCTS: MediaTek plans to roll out new products this quarter, including a flagship mobile phone chip and a GB10 chip that it is codeveloping with Nvidia Corp MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday projected that revenue this quarter would dip by 7 to 13 percent to between NT$130.1 billion and NT$140 billion (US$4.38 billion and US$4.71 billion), compared with NT$150.37 billion last quarter, which it attributed to subdued front-loading demand and unfavorable foreign exchange rates. The Hsinchu-based chip designer said that the forecast factored in the negative effects of an estimated 6 percent appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar against the greenback. “As some demand has been pulled into the first half of the year and resulted in a different quarterly pattern, we expect the third quarter revenue to decline sequentially,”
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (better known as Foxconn) ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose 60 places to reach No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc. at 348th, Pegatron Corp. at 461st, CPC Corp., Taiwan at 494th and Wistron Corp. at 496th. According to Fortune, the world’s
DIVERSIFYING: Taiwanese investors are reassessing their preference for US dollar assets and moving toward Europe amid a global shift away from the greenback Taiwanese investors are reassessing their long-held preference for US-dollar assets, shifting their bets to Europe in the latest move by global investors away from the greenback. Taiwanese funds holding European assets have seen an influx of investments recently, pushing their combined value to NT$13.7 billion (US$461 million) as of the end of last month, the highest since 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Over the first half of this year, Taiwanese investors have also poured NT$14.1 billion into Europe-focused funds based overseas, bringing total assets up to NT$134.8 billion, according to data from the Securities Investment Trust and Consulting Association (SITCA),
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