BANKING
HSBC optimistic on progress
HSBC is making good progress on its turnaround plan and showing “significant traction” on factors it can control, although the eurozone crisis and increased regulation are creating stiff headwinds, its chief executive said yesterday. “We’ve made encouraging progress for getting the bank into shape. We’ve identified where we want to be in the future — first and foremost in our two home markets of the UK and Hong Kong — and 20 priority growth markets,” CEO Stuart Gulliver told reporters on a conference call. HSBC said it had made “material progress” and is on track to meet its target of getting return on equity above 12 percent and to cut costs by US$3.5 billion a year.
SPAIN
Economy back to recession
Spain’s GDP shrank by 0.3 percent in the first quarter after contracting at the same rate in the final three months last year, confirming a return to recession, according to final statistics published yesterday. The figures confirm preliminary data issued in April by the National Statistics Institute (INE), underscoring the precarious state of the eurozone’s fourth-biggest economy, which is battling a record high 24.4 percent unemployment rate. An INE statement said that weaker domestic demand, including household consumption and public spending, had undermined growth as Spain struggles with austerity measures.
BANKING
Shareholders sue JPMorgan
Shareholders of JPMorgan Chase & Co have filed two lawsuits against the biggest US bank, accusing it and its leaders of taking excessive risk and causing a monumental US$2 billion trading loss. One suit was filed by California shareholder James Baker. A second was filed by shareholder Arizona-based Saratoga Advantage Trust’s financial services portfolio. Meanwhile, FBI Director Robert Mueller said on Wednesday the bureau has launched a preliminary investigation of JPMorgan following the US$2 billion trading loss at the bank. Mueller’s comment at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing was the first on-the-record confirmation of the probe.
SMARTPHONES
LG unveils new Optimus
South Korea’s LG Electronics yesterday unveiled a new version of its Optimus smartphone with greater memory and a more powerful battery, in an attempt to catch up with its rivals. The company said the Optimus LTE 2 — which will be released in the domestic market “soon” — offers as much memory as a notebook computer, allowing consumers to use several applications simultaneously. A new battery gives 40 percent more running time on a single charge than the Optimus LTE 1 released in October last year. LG gave no timetable for overseas sales of the LTE (Long-Term Evolution) phone, which uses a faster mobile network that is available mainly in South Korea, Japan, the US and parts of Europe.
SPORTS GOODS
Adidas sues copycats
Adidas AG has sued to stop a US sporting goods retailer and a skateboarding equipment maker from selling sneakers with three parallel diagonal stripes, a design it said looks too much like its own. The world’s second-largest sporting goods company claimed that sneakers made by World Industries Inc and sold by Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp are knock-offs that infringe many Adidas trademarks. Adidas first used the three-stripe motif in 1952 and began trademarking it in the US in 1994.
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