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.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
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