INTERNET
Yahoo boardroom row erupts
A major Yahoo Inc shareholder believes the slumping Internet company would be better off without Jerry Yang (楊致遠) on its board as it mulls a possible sale. In a letter on Friday to Yahoo’s board, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb said Yang has too many conflicts of interest to keep the board seat he has held since starting the company more than 16 years ago. Loeb, who owns a 5.2 percent stake in Yahoo through a fund called Third Point LLC, based his conclusion on published reports that Yang has been talking to several buyout firms about joining forces to buy a controlling stake in the company. The letter lists the Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, Silver Lake, KKR & Co and the Blackstone Group as the firms talking to Yang. In a statement, Yahoo reiterated that its board has been exploring various ways to boost the company’s stock price and brushed off the reports cited in Loeb’s letter as “rumor and speculation.”
GERMANY
Tax revenues forecast to rise
The tax take this year is expected to come in 16.2 billion euros (US$22.3 billion) higher than previously forecast, which should help the country balance its budget by 2016 at the latest, the government said on Friday. The new tax projection forecasts a total tax take this year of 571.2 billion euros minutes — up from the 555 billion euros estimated in May. This year’s projection was already revised upward in May and the new estimate provides the government further leeway to cut this year’s budget deficit down from an expected 48 billion euros to “less than half” of that, Deputy Finance Minister Steffen Kampeter said. That would bring the deficit down to about 1 percent of GDP — well below the 3 percent deficit ceiling mandated by the eurozone. As growth in the economy — Europe’s biggest — shows signs of slowing, the Finance Ministry expects next year’s tax take to be only slightly higher than projected in May, up by 7.4 billion euros to 584.6 billion euros.
IRELAND
New austerity cuts unveiled
Dublin announced a deepening austerity drive on Friday, committing itself to cut 3.8 billion euros from next year’s deficit and to keep increasing taxes and slashing spending through 2015 to meet the terms of its international bailout. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the rising level of cuts and tax increases outlined in his 2012-to-2015 fiscal plan are needed for Ireland to claw its 2015 deficit back within 3 percent of GDP, the key target in last year’s bailout deal. Such cuts, Noonan said, were forecast to reduce Ireland’s deficit for next year to 8.6 percent of GDP, 7.5 perecent in 2013, 5.1 percent in 2014 and 2.9 percent in 2015.
BANKING
New Delhi to aid State Bank
India’s government will invest 40 billion rupees (US$814 million) of capital in State Bank of India by the end of March, bank chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said. The country’s biggest bank will need about 400 billion rupees in fresh capital during the next three years, Chaudhuri told reporters in Chennai yesterday. State Bank also aims to raise the capital from its shareholders and own funds, he said. Mumbai-based State Bank has been in talks with the government to raise capital since at least February last year. Moody’s Investors Service cut State Bank’s financial strength rating on Oct. 4, citing deteriorating asset quality.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”