Macquarie Group Ltd, Australia’s biggest investment bank, cut about 10 percent of its investment banking workforce in Asia last week, two people with knowledge of the departures said.
Koichiro Yano, a financial institutions group banker in Tokyo, is among about 20 employees in Asia outside of Australia leaving Macquarie, the people said, asking not to be identified because the departures are not public.
Macquarie, which is mainly cutting vice presidents and some junior positions, will maintain an investment banking presence in 14 countries in Asia, one of the people said.
On Monday, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ANZ), the third-largest bank in Australia, said it planned to eliminate about 1,000 jobs as it combats a slump in lending growth.
The Melbourne-based ANZ said the domestic cuts would be made by Sept. 30, involving primarily middle-management, back-office and support staff.
Macquarie said on Feb. 7 that slumping advisory fees would contribute to a 25 percent drop in profit for in the year ending on March 31.
Bank of America Corp and Nomura Holdings Inc have also fired investment bankers in Asia as Europe’s lingering credit crisis made companies reluctant to spend on acquisitions and unable to sell shares on stock markets.
Operating income at Macquarie Capital, the unit that includes mergers advisory and equity and debt capital markets, might drop 35 percent in the six months through March 31 from a year earlier, Macquarie said last week. The division has been “severely impacted by macroeconomic conditions,” according to a statement.
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS) is seeking buyers for most of its advisory unit and might close the business if a sale fails.
RBS said last month it would cut about 4,800 jobs, including 3,500 at its investment bank, over the next three years, as the Edinburgh-based lender tries to sell its unprofitable cash equities and merger-advisory operations.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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