BANKING
NAB to cut 1,400 UK jobs
National Australia Bank (NAB) said yesterday it planned to cut more than 1,400 jobs in the UK, as part of a US$305 million restructuring of its banking business there. The bank said the need for change at Clydesdale Bank was precipitated by a weakening economy and declining real estate prices in the UK, as well as higher funding costs. The bank said about 1,400 jobs would be eliminated by the end of the 2015 fiscal year. That includes 205 positions eliminated in the half-year to March. The bank expects to save £74 million (US$120 million) a year once the restructuring is finished.
STOCK MARKETS
NYSE Euronext profits fall
NYSE Euronext said its profits fell by almost a third in the first quarter of the year because of a difficult trading environment and costs from its failed merger with Deutsche Boerse. The New York exchange said profits were down 32 percent to US$121 million as revenue fell 17 percent to US$952 million in the first quarter. The exchange said it incurred US$31 million in merger and exit costs for the period, including US$16 million from the terminated merger with Deutsche Boerse.
BEER
AB InBev profits jump 75%
The world’s biggest brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev NV (AB InBev) said yesterday that first quarter net profit jumped 75 percent thanks to lower financing costs and taxes, as well as increased beer sales. Net profit rose to US$1.69 billion between January and March from US$964 million a year earlier, after a sharp drop in financing costs as well as declining taxes. AB InBev’s chief financial officer Filipe Dutra said the company was benefiting from growing profits in countries like Brazil, where the tax rate is lower than in Europe and the US. Meanwhile, revenue increased 3.7 percent to US$9.33 billion, as strong sales in Latin America and Asia offset falling sales in Europe.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota to post year profit
Japanese car giant Toyota Motor will post a full-year operating profit of US$4.3 billion, nearly 30 percent above forecast, when it announces its earnings results next week, a report in the Nikkei Shimbun business daily said yesterday. The company will announce operating profit of ¥350 billion in the year to March 31, surpassing the ¥270 billion estimate it gave in February. It it will also target operating profit to surge to between ¥800 billion and ¥900 billion for the current fiscal year, which would be more than double on the year, the paper said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)