Mizuho Financial Group Inc, Japan’s third-biggest bank by market value, said it would cut 3,000 jobs through a planned merger of its corporate and retail lending units.
Mizuho also seeks to eliminate 20 percent of management jobs by the time of the merger, scheduled for completion in the year ending March 2014, according to a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday. Mizuho Securities Co, the firm’s brokerage unit, will cut 700 positions, the statement said.
The company unveiled the merger plans in September as it seeks to compete with rivals Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc for lending that is picking up after a two-year slump. Profit at Mizuho fell 18 percent last quarter, according to earnings figures released yesterday, led by a drop in lending income.
The integration of Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd and Mizuho Bank Ltd is part of efforts by the Tokyo-based lender to improve its operations after a computer systems failure delayed retail transactions in the wake of the country’s record earthquake and tsunami in March.
Net income declined to ¥158.3 billion (US$2.052 billion) in the second quarter from ¥191.9 billion a year earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on six-month results released by the company in Tokyo yesterday.
Lending profit fell 3.7 percent to ¥270.4 billion in the second quarter from a year earlier. Fees and commissions dropped 2.3 percent to ¥112.8 billion, while bond and securities trading profit surged 84 percent to ¥88.7 billion.
Meanwhile, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc, Japan’s second-biggest bank by market value, raised its full-year profit forecast to ¥500 billion as lower bad-loan costs outweigh a drop in lending income.
The forecast was raised 25 percent from ¥400 billion projected previously, the Tokyo-based bank said in a statement yesterday. Sumitomo Mitsui posted a 48 percent decline in net income for the three months ended Sept. 30, according to Bloomberg calculations based on six-month results released by the company.
Sumitomo Mitsui’s lending profit fell 4.5 percent to ¥335.5 billion last quarter from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the first-half figures. Fees and commissions gained 3.8 percent to ¥199.3 billion. Trading profit slipped 1 percent to ¥61.8 billion.
Sumitomo Mitsui also plans to spend as much as ¥50 billion to buy back up to 1.63 percent of its outstanding shares between Dec. 2 and Jan. 20, according to a statement to the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday.
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
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,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured