PHARMACEUTICALS
Takeda to buy Nycomed
Japan’s top drugmaker, Takeda Pharmaceutical, has reached a US$12 billion deal to buy Swiss drugmaker Nycomed, a report said yesterday. Takeda has struck a basic agreement and is expected to make a formal announcement soon, the Nikkei business daily said in its evening edition. It will be the largest ever acquisition by a Japanese drugmaker and make Takeda the world’s 10th largest pharmaceutical company, it said.
INTERNET
Baidu to pay damages
Chinese Web giant Baidu (百度) has been ordered to pay damages of more than US$75,000, the maximum penalty available, to a literary Web site after losing a copyright suit, state media said yesterday. A Shanghai court has ruled that Baidu should pay 500,000 yuan (US$76,950) in compensation to Shanda Literature (盛大文學), a content provider Web site, for violating the company’s copyright, the Global Times said. Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo (郭怡廣) said the company has appealed the ruling.
FINANCE
BofA Merrill Lynch fined
Hong Kong’s securities watchdog says it has fined a unit of Bank of America (BofA) Merrill Lynch HK$3 million (US$386,000) over the sales of some financial products to clients in 2007. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said yesterday it also issued a reprimand to Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Ltd over the sales of the index-linked notes to 72 clients. The SFC said an investigation found Merrill Lynch failed to “properly assess the financial situation and investment objectives” of 40 clients.
JAPAN
Current-account surplus down
Japan’s current-account surplus narrowed more than expected in March as a record earthquake disrupted the nation’s supply chain, curbing exports. The gap shrank 34 percent from a year earlier to ¥1.68 trillion (US$21 billion), the Finance Ministry said yesterday. Exports fell 1.4 percent and imports increased 16.6 percent, the ministry said. The ministry also said in a separate report yesterday that Japan fell into a trade deficit of ¥786.8 billion in the first 20 days of April. Exports fell 12.7 percent year-on-year, the sharpest fall since Oct. 1 to Oct. 20 in 2009, while imports rose 14.2 percent.
FINANCE
Treasury selling AIG stock
American International Group (AIG) and the US Treasury said on Wednesday they would sell just under US$9 billion in AIG stock, suggesting the government’s exit from its crisis-era investment will be more difficult than originally thought. The US$9 billion figure is less than half of what had been contemplated earlier this year. Based on the government’s US$28.72 break-even point and the government’s total shareholding, the Treasury would have to raise just over US$47.5 billion in total from AIG share sales to break even.
SOFTWARE
Oversight of Microsoft ends
US Department of Justice oversight of Microsoft ended yesterday, more than a decade after the US authorities filed an historic anti-trust lawsuit against the US software giant. “Microsoft no longer dominates the computer industry as it did when the complaint was filed in 1998,” the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Wednesday. As a result, the settlement with the Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft known as the “final judgment,” which has been in place since 2002, would expire yesterday, it said.
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
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by