FINANCE
Berlin must step up: Soros
The EU could be destroyed by the “nightmare” euro crisis and Germany needs to take the responsibility of saving the currency, billionaire fund manager George Soros said on Monday. Soros, who made his mark as an investor on a big bet against the British pound in 1992, said the other alternative is for Germany — the eurozone’s biggest economy — to simply leave the 17-member currency bloc. The crisis “is pushing the EU into a lasting depression and it is entirely self-created,” the chairman of Soros Fund Management said.
FINANCE
Spanish banks downgraded
Standard & Poor’s ratings agency cut the credit ratings of seven Spanish banks, including the two largest, Santander and BBVA, after having downgraded Spain’s sovereign debt. Banks that suffered in the downgrade late yesterday were Santander, BBVA, Banesto, Banco Popular, Bankia-BFA, Banco Sabadell and CaixaBank, the New York-based ratings agency said in a statement. Standard & Poor’s axed Spain’s sovereign credit rating by two notches on Wednesday last week, leaving its bonds just one level above junk bond status.
RETAIL
LVMH sees profit boom
French luxury conglomerate LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton saw its revenue increase strongly in the third quarter, driven by its retail operations in developing countries. The company behind Louis Vuitton luggage and the Givenchy fashion label said on Monday that sales were up 15 percent to 6.9 billion euros (US$8.95 billion) for the period between July and last month. All of its business groups saw gains in the third quarter. Sales in LVMH’s selective retailing business, which includes luxury malls and the Sephora cosmetic superstores, rose 20 percent. The company said that selective retailing was making especially strong gains in China and Russia.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Cancer drug boosts Roche
Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG on Tuesday reported a 7 percent increase in sales of its pharmaceutical products for the first nine months of the year, powered by demand for its cancer drugs. The Basel, Switzerland-based company, helped by sales of established and new cancer drugs and recent cost-cutting drives, said its pharmaceutical division’s sales over the three quarters rose to 26.2 billion Swiss francs (US$28.08 billion), up from SF24.4 billion in the same time period last year.
ONLINE RETAIL
Amazon to hire thousands
Amazon.com Inc says it is hiring 50,000 temporary workers at order-fulfilment centers across the US this holiday season. The Seattle-based online retailer says it expects “thousands” of those it hires to stay on full time. Full-time workers get stock grants and benefits. The company says its full-time employees make 30 percent more than traditional retail employees. It says stock grants have added an average 9 percent to base pay over the past five years.
FINANCE
Apple hires Amazon exec
Apple Inc hired Amazon.com Inc executive William Stasior to lead its Siri voice-recognition software group. Stasior, who had run a unit at Amazon handling search and related advertising, will head the group that is building the voice-activated personal assistant that Apple introduced on its mobile devices last year, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure