BANKING
HSBC hiring in Asia
HSBC said yesterday it would employ at least 2,000 extra people in China and Singapore over the next five years, as it seeks to tap the fast-growing Asia Pacific markets. The Asia-focused British lender plans to hire at least 200 staff in China (excluding Hong Kong and Macau) each year until 2016, and another 1,000 in Singapore during the period, a spokeswoman from HSBC Hong Kong’s office said. The bank, which is headquartered in London, currently has 5,000 employees in China and 3,500 in Singapore. The spokeswoman said the hiring plan did not specify in which areas the new employees would be hired.
ENERGY
Toshiba eyes Landis+Gyr
Toshiba and its Japanese partners plan to buy Swiss metering technology firm Landis+Gyr for ¥200 billion (US$2.5 billion), the Asahi Shimbun and the Nikkei Shimbun said yesterday. The Japanese electronics giant has obtained preferential negotiation rights with an Australian investment group that has the major stake in the Swiss firm, the newspapers said. The two sides are likely to reach a final agreement as early as the end of this week in a deal aimed at enhancing Toshiba’s competitiveness in the next-generation power grid market, the dailies said.
DEFENSE
BAE fined US$79 million
British defense contractor BAE Systems has agreed to pay additional fines of up to US$79 million for flouting US regulations governing the export of sensitive military hardware. BAE, Europe’s biggest defense company and a major supplier to the US military, said yesterday that the latest penalties formed part of a civil settlement with the US Department of State. It said the latest fine would be payable over three years and that it would be able to reduce it by up to US$10 million to offset the cost of improved export control compliance measures.
INTERNET
Bing counting on Facebook
Microsoft’s Bing search engine is leaning more heavily on Facebook to make its results more meaningful than Google’s. As of Monday, Bing’s search results will vary depending on whether the person making a request is logged into Facebook’s online social network at the same time. This means that a link that Bing’s standard ranking formula would have buried on the fourth or fifth page of results might appear on the first page if the information had been recommended by friends within the searcher’s Facebook circle. Bing is also adding several other features and tools that draw upon the preferences shared among Facebook’s more than 500 million members.
TRADE
US delays free-trade pacts
US President Barack Obama’s administration said on Monday it would hold off on trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia until Congress approves benefits for workers. It marks the latest political feud to block congressional action on the free-trade deals. The White House, which has butted heads with its labor allies by pressing ahead with free trade, said it would not send to Congress legislation on the three pacts until renewal of a program that supports affected workers. Obama’s top economic aide Gene Sperling said that the US had an “economic and moral obligation” to assist workers and voiced hope that the Republicans would agree on the assistance alongside the trade agreements.
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