BANKING
HSBC profits ‘well ahead’
Europe’s biggest bank, HSBC, said profits in the third quarter and for the year to date were “well ahead” of a year ago as bad debts continued to fall, mainly in the US. HSBC yesterday said impairments in the third quarter fell to their lowest quarterly level since early 2007. HSBC said trading revenues for global banking and markets (GBM), its investment banking arm, were lower in the latest quarter than a year ago, but remained high by historical standards. GBM made a first-half profit of US$5.6 billion, its second best half ever. The bank made a pretax profit of US$11.1 billion for the first six months of the year, more than double a year earlier, as US impairments dropped.
BANKING
Charge hits RBS profits
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) expected market conditions to remain challenging into the fourth quarter, as charges on the value of its own debt hit the third-quarter results of the part-nationalized British bank. RBS reported yesterday a third-quarter operating loss of £132 million (US$213 million), compared with a second-quarter profit of £869 million. Earnings were hit by a charge of £858 million in relation to movements in the fair value of the group’s own debt. The bank said excluding this, it had an operating profit of £726 million in the third quarter.
AUTOMOBILES
Bridgestone earnings up
Bridgestone Corp said yesterday its earnings are continuing to recover this year as demand for its tires improves, especially at home in Japan. The Japanese tire maker, one of the world’s largest along with Michelin SCA of France, posted ¥66.8 billion (US$826.7 million) profit over the first nine months of this year, on sales of ¥2.09 trillion. That was a turnaround from the same period last year when the company booked a ¥27.5 billion loss and sales were 12 percent lower. Bridge-stone said high raw materials costs and the strong yen continued to weigh down profits.
IRELAND
Budget cuts announced
Ireland will cut 6 billion euros from its budget next year under an austerity drive to save the debt--ridden eurozone nation 15 billion euros over four years, the government said on Thursday. “The government has agreed on an adjustment of 6 billion euros [US$8.52 billion] for 2011,” Irish Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said in a statement. He said the initial savings would slash the public deficit to between 9.25 and 9.5 percent of GDP next year, from the 32 percent currently caused by the cost of massive bank bailouts.
RETAIL
WalMart takeover probed
WalMart Stores, the world’s biggest retailer, said it was cooperating with an investigation into possible insider trading related to its takeover of Japanese retail chain Seiyu Ltd. Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is looking into stock transactions conducted when WalMart turned Seiyu into a fully owned unit in 2007, a source confirmed to Reuters after Japanese media reported the investigation earlier in the day. “We have fully cooperated with the authorities for their investigation and will continue to do so,” said Kumie Wama, a Tokyo-based spokeswoman for WalMart. She declined to comment on details of the investigation.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”