STEEL
POSCO details expansion
South Korea’s POSCO announced plans for local and overseas expansion yesterday, saying it would build a US$1.4 billion plant in South Korea in addition to a new plant in India. The company said it would invest 1.6 trillion won (US$1.4 billion) in the plant in Gwangyang City on the south coast, with a production capacity of 3.3 million tonnes a year of hot-rolled coil steel by January 2014. It will also build a plant in the western Indian state of Maharashtra by December 2013, with a capacity of 1.8 million tonnes per year of cold-rolled coil. When the Gwangyang plant is completed, POSCO’s annual hot-rolled coil output will rise to 26.84 million tonnes, from 23.54 million.
ELECTRONICS
ASML expects order rise
ASML Holding NV, Europe’s biggest semiconductor equipment maker, expects capital expenditure in the industry to increase next year. Investments will rise as companies order new equipment to lower costs, chief financial officer Peter Wennink said at a Morgan Stanley conference in Barcelona yesterday. The Veldhoven, Netherlands-based company said last month that third-quarter net income rose and reiterated that this year’s sales would advance to a record, helped by strong order intake.
INTERNET
Zuckerberg’s first site sold
The FaceMash.com Web address that landed Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in trouble as a Harvard University student was sold at an auction for slightly more than US$30,000. FaceMash.com drew 10 bids, with the top contender offering US$30,201, according to a posting online on Thursday at domain name auction service Flippa. Zuckerberg was a Harvard student in 2003 when he made a FaceMash.com Web site on which people could compare pictures of coeds at the college and rate which was “hotter.” The Web site was quickly shut down by Harvard administrators unhappy with the stunt. Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard and started Facebook in 2004.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Bayer plans 4,500 layoffs
Germany’s Bayer AG said it planned to cut 4,500 jobs by the end of 2012. Chief executive Marijn Dekkers said in a statement on Thursday the cost-cutting measures would put the company in a stronger position to grow. The statement said the layoffs — 1,700 of them planned in Germany — would be partly offset by the creation of an estimated 2,500 positions in emerging markets. Bayer, famous for its aspirin, but also a producer of pesticides, plastics and pharmaceuticals, currently employs about 108,700 people worldwide. The company last month reported higher revenues and net earnings for the third-quarter, with a net profit of 280 million euros (US$383.5 million) and a revenue of 8.58 billion euros for the July-September period.
AVIATION
Lockheed to close plant
Lockheed Martin Corp will close its plant that makes components for the P-3 surveillance plane in Eagan, Minnesota, by 2013 and move work from its Middle River, Maryland, site next year, resulting in at least 400 job cuts. Lockheed’s mission systems and sensors unit will shift 650 jobs from Eagan to Owego, New York, San Diego, California and Manassas, Virginia, according to a statement on Thursday. The company will also transfer work on ground vehicles from Owego to Dallas. Closing the plants will save the company US$150 million over the next 10 years.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six