BANKING
Deutsche Bank reports loss
Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest financial group, reported a 1.2 billion euros (US$1.7 billion) loss for the third quarter, due to a big charge related to its planned takeover of retail lender Postbank AG. Deutsche Bank, which had already warned of the loss for last month, said yesterday that it had booked a 2.3 billion euro write-down for the takeover of Postbank, without which the bank would have posted a net profit of 1.1 billion euro. A year earlier, it had made a net profit of 1.39 billion euros. Net revenue fell to 5 billion euros from 7.2 billion euros, but would have rise to 7.3 billion euros excluding the Postbank charge.
SOFTWARE
SAP posts Q3 profit
SAP, the professional software giant, yesterday posted a third-quarter net profit of 501 million euros, a gain of 12 percent from the same period a year earlier. Sales of software and related services showed gains of at least 20 percent, owing in large part to the acquisition of the US firm Sybase, while SAP confirmed full-year targets of a 9 percent to 11 percent increase in software revenue and an operating margin of 30 percent to 31 percent. A SAP statement said software revenues, a key benchmark, gained 25 percent to 656 million euros, while revenue from related services was 20 percent higher at 2.3 billion euros.
ELECTRONICS
Canon’s Q3 profit soars
Japanese high-tech giant Canon Inc said yesterday its third-quarter net profit nearly doubled to ¥68.2 billion (US$812 million) year-on-year on stronger office equipment and consumer product sales. With the launch of new products and cost-cutting efforts offsetting the impact of a strong yen, Canon said its net profit for July through last month rose to ¥68.2 billion, an increase of 86 percent on the ¥36.7 billion a year earlier. Net income nearly tripled over the nine months ended September to ¥ 92.6 billion, up 174.9 percent from a year ago with sales of single lens reflex cameras and laser printer demand recovering from the financial crisis.
ECONOMY
Fed’s policy could hurt
The global economic recovery could derail if commodity prices rise further after the US Federal Reserve’s move on further quantitative easing, details of which are expected next week, an official with the International Energy Agency said yesterday. Eduardo Lopez, the agency’s senior oil demand analyst, said the impact of QE2 was unclear because it had not started, but it means basically the US will print more money. Lopez also highlighted divergent views on whether global oil markets next year would be tight. “To us, it is not the case. According to some banks it is,” he said. “According to our demand-supply profile, it does not look particularly tight.”
INTERNET
Lime Group gets injunction
Lime Group, whose LimeWire software has allowed people to share songs and other files over the Internet, received a federal injunction on Tuesday to disable key parts of its service. The privately owned company and its founder, Mark Gorton, have been wrestling in court with the Recording Industry Association of America, for four years. The association says LimeWire’s software encourages illegal sharing of copyright-protected music. The injunction, issued by US District Court in New York, compels Lime Group to disable LimeWire’s searching, downloading, uploading, file trading and distribution features immediately.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last