BANKING
Credit Suisse profit slashed
Swiss bank Credit Suisse Group yesterday reported a third-quarter net profit of 609 million Swiss francs (US$621.4 million) that was far below even pessimistic expectations, blaming “challenging conditions” for the 74 percent year-on-year drop. Net profit attributable to shareholders during the same period last year was SF2.35 billion. Analysts had predicted a net profit of SF976 million, though some anticipated significantly lower results because of higher salary and bonus costs after hirings at its investment bank.
INTERNET
EBay profit rises 22 percent
EBay Inc on Wednesday said its third-quarter profit climbed 22 percent, helped by cost-cutting and its growing PayPal business. The online marketplace operator predicted results for the current quarter that were better than analysts had been expecting, sending its shares up nearly 7 percent in after-hours trading. EBay earned US$432 million, or US$0.33 per share, in the third quarter, compared with a profit of US$350 million, or US$0.27 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
INTERNET
Germans oppose Street View
Internet giant Google said more than 244,000 Germans had asked that their homes be made unrecognizable on its Street View program, which will be launched in Germany next month. Google estimated that the requests amounted to about 3 percent of the population of Ger-many’s 20 largest cities, images of which are to go online as part of the company’s mapping program. German authorities demanded that Google allow citizens to request that their homes not be pictured in Street View, saying that posting images of private residences on the Internet violated individual privacy. Street View is currently available in 23 countries. Germany is the only one where citizens could request that their homes be removed before the program went online.
ELECTRONICS
Toshiba lifts profit target
Japanese electronics giant Toshiba yesterday almost trebled its profit projections for the first half of the current fiscal year, thanks to strong sales of semiconductors and LCDs. For the six months to last month, Toshiba upgraded its net profit expectation to ¥27 billion (US$333 million) from an earlier estimate of ¥10 billion. Toshiba said its semiconductor business, led by NAND flash memory products, enjoyed significant successes during the period, boosting the profit figure. However, it cut its sales forecast to ¥3.08 trillion from an earlier projection of ¥3.3 trillion because of the yen’s appreciation and the discontinuation of its mobile phone business.
RETAIL
UK retail sales fall again
British retail sales unexpectedly fell for a second month in a row last month, driven lower by weak clothing and fuel sales, official data showed yesterday, in a further sign that consumer spending is slowing. The Office for National Statistics said sales volumes including automotive fuel fell 0.2 percent last month after a downwardly revised drop of 0.7 percent in August. Analysts had forecast a rise of 0.4 percent last month. On the year, sales were 0.5 percent higher, well below forecasts for a reading of 1 percent annual growth. The figures, which show the longest sustained fall in sales since the turn of the year, are likely to reinforce the view that Britain’s economic recovery has peaked and support broad evidence of weakening consumer activity.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts