CAMERAS
Olympus warns employees
Japan’s Olympus Corp is preparing to take legal action, including possible criminal complaints, against any executive found responsible for the accounting scandal engulfing the firm, according to an internal staff e-mail. The memo, obtained by Reuters yesterday, was sent to Olympus employees on Tuesday by the firm’s new president, Shuichi Takayama, who said he was striving to restore trust in the once-proud maker of cameras and medical equipment. “We will wait for the third-party panel to report and we are preparing to take firm legal action, including criminal complaints, against any manager it finds responsible,” Takayama wrote in the e-mail.
INVESTMENT
FDI in China dips
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China last month shrank to US$8.33 billion from US$9.05 billion in September, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said yesterday, as Western trade partners struggled to resolve their economic woes. Compared with a year ago, however, FDI was up 8.75 percent, it said. For the first 10 months of the year, China took a total of US$95.01 billion in foreign direct investment, up 15.86 percent from the same period last year, but slower than the 16.6 percent growth in the January-to-September period.
CREDIT RATINGS
EU may allow lawsuits
The EU said on Tuesday it wanted to allow investors to sue credit ratings agencies for compensation if they broke EU regulations “intentionally or with gross negligence.” The proposal from the European Commission needs to be approved by EU governments and the European Parliament. It also requires agencies to be more transparent over how they decide on a country’s or company’s credit-worthiness and to warn bond issuers of a change in rating one day ahead of publishing it.
INTERNET
Google to offer Sony music
Google Inc reached an agreement to offer songs from Sony Corp for a new music service that was to be announced yesterday, a person with knowledge of the matter said, leaving Warner Music Group as the lone holdout. Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group and EMI Group, the other two major record labels, have already signed on, said two people, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
BANKING
Citigroup may axe jobs
Citigroup Inc, the US bank that had a management reshuffle earlier this month, may cut as many as 3,000 jobs as CEO Vikram Pandit squeezes costs, a person familiar with the company’s plans said. The reduction, equal to about 1 percent of the staff, is an estimate and may change, the person said. Among the jobs eliminated may be 900 from the division that includes the bank’s trading and investment banking operations, the person said. Citigroup employed about 267,000 people at the end of the third quarter.
SEMICONDUCToRS
Infineon sees sales drop
Infineon Technologies AG, Europe’s second-largest maker of semiconductors, said sales in fiscal 2012 will drop by a “mid-single-digit percentage” as customers hold off on orders. Revenue in the automotive segment is expected to develop “slightly better” than the company average, while sales in industrial markets and at the chip-card and security units sales are forecast to be “slightly worse” than the group average, the Neubiberg, Germany-based Infineon said in a statement yesterday.
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],”