AUTOMAKERS
Toyota halts Turkey plants
Toyota Motor Corp’s auto assembly factory in Turkey was preparing to halt production as part of an eight-day suspension across Europe because of parts shortages, a senior official said on Wednesday. Toyota said its factories in China would also reduce production because of disruptions in supplies of components needed by makers of autos and electronics following last month’s earthquake and tsunami that devastated parts of Japan. Orhan Ozer, the president and chief executive of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Turkey Inc said that the Turkish plant in the western city of Adapazari would halt output between Wednesday and May 2 along with other auto assembly factories in Britain and France, and engine plants in Britain and Poland. After the stoppages, the plants will run at limited capacity next month.
ASIA
ADB urges capital controls
Asian countries should erect capital controls to counter an influx of hot money into the region, stoking worries over asset price bubbles, the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADB) said yesterday. Masahiro Kawai, the dean and chief executive of the arm of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, said the region continued to face risks from rising asset prices and surging inflation. “Some of these economies exhibit signs of overheating, inflation and asset-price bubbles,” Kawai said at a seminar in Hong Kong. He added that “a combination of policies is needed, including capital inflow controls ... to limit volatile capital inflows.”
INTERNET
Schmidt gets a new package
Billionaire Eric Schmidt feels more comfortable taking a million-dollar paycheck as Google Inc’s former chief executive than he did when he was running the Internet’s most powerful company. After voluntarily limiting his annual salary to US$1 during most of his 10-year reign as Google’s chief executive, Schmidt is getting a US$1.25 million raise in his new job as executive chairman. The bigger paycheck kicked in on April 4 when Schmidt was replaced as chief executive by Google co-founder Larry Page. The revised compensation package, filed with federal regulators on Tuesday, will pay Schmidt an annual bonus of up to US$6 million. The raise and bonus plan supplement a stock package valued at US$100 million that the board awarded Schmidt shortly after the late January announcement about Google’s planned change in command. The stock will vest during the next four years, a sign that Google wants Schmidt to stick around.
CONGLOMERATES
GE profit beats expectations
General Electric Co (GE) posted a fourth straight quarter of profit growth, beating analysts’ estimates, as equipment orders increased, and boosted its dividend for the third time since July last year. First-quarter profit from continuing operations rose 58 percent to US$3.58 billion, or US$0.33, excluding pension results, up from US$2.26 billion, or US$0.20, a year earlier, GE said. That exceeded the average estimate of US$0.28 a share from analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt plans to speed sales and profit growth this year and next year by focusing on energy, aviation, transportation and healthcare as well as a slimmer GE Capital. He is spending on research and more than US$12 billion of acquisitions since October, mostly in energy, as he builds technology offerings and the oil and gas division. “GE has emerged from the recession a stronger, more competitive company,” Immelt said in the statement.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”