AVIATION
China plans huge investment
China plans to invest more than 1.5 trillion yuan (US$228 billion) in the aviation industry over the next five years to meet surging demand as its economy booms, the sector’s top regulator said yesterday. By 2015, the country is expected to have more than 220 commercial airports and its fleet size will expand to more than 4,500 planes, said Li Jiaxiang (李家祥), head of the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The country currently has 175 commercial airports in operation and keeps more than 2,600 aircraft in its fleet, Li said.
EXCHANGES
CBOE open to sale, merger
The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s (CBOE) parent is now formally open to “strategic transactions,” such as a sale or merger with another exchange operator, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s stance said on Wednesday. At a Feb. 8 board meeting, CBOE Holdings Inc management told directors that it would not be opposed to a transaction, though no specific possibilities were outlined, said the source, who requested anonymity, adding the board did not oppose this. The next day, two major exchange takeovers were unveiled. Since then, the source said, many e-mailed and verbal messages have been exchanged internally on how CBOE, the No. 1 US options market, will respond to the recent rash of global merger plans.
BANKING
RBS sees losses shrink
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Britain’s largest government-owned bank, reported a smaller annual net loss last year after returning to profit in the final quarter. RBS, which is 84 percent owned by the taxpayer after receiving a state bailout at the height of the credit crisis in 2008, yesterday posted a net loss of ￡1.1 billion (US$1.8 billion) for last year, compared with a ￡3.6 billion loss in 2009. The bank made a small net profit of ￡12 million in the final three months of last year, favorable when compared with a ￡765 million loss in the same quarter in 2009. RBS chief executive Stephen Hester said the bank’s recovery is “ahead of schedule” two years on from the global financial crisis.
CHEMICALS
BASF posts stunning results
BASF, the world’s biggest chemicals company, presented stunning results yesterday, including a net profit that leapt more than three-fold to 4.56 billion euros (US$6.3 billion). The group had suffered from the global economic slowdown in 2009, when net profit amounted to 1.41 billion euros. It bounced back last year, and despite problems in Libya, BASF chief executive Juergen Hambrecht was quoted by a statement as saying the group is now “optimistic for the first quarter [of 2011] and the year as a whole.”
INSURANCE
Allianz sees higher earnings
Allianz SE says its fourth-quarter earnings last year climbed 11 percent on a small increase in revenue and a more profitable core business. Allianz yesterday reported net earnings of 1.14 billion euros for the October to December period — up from 1.02 billion euros a year earlier. Revenues climbed 2 percent to 26 billion euros from 25.5 billion euros. The Munich-based company said the combined ratio at its property and casualty division was down to 94.9 percent from 95.3 percent. A lower ratio means an insurance underwriting business is more profitable. Full-year net earnings were up to 5.05 billion euros from 4.21 billion euros in 2009. Revenues grew to 106.5 billion euros from 97.4 billion euros.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS