ELECTRONICS
Sharp shares jump on talks
Sharp Corp shares jumped yesterday on a report that the embattled Japanese electronics maker is in talks with US tech giants Apple, Google and Microsoft on forming business and capital tie-ups. The maker of Aquos-brand products closed 6.2 percent higher at ¥172 in Tokyo trade. Sharp was talking to the US firms about supplying them with small and medium-sized power-saving LCD panels for laptops, tablet computers and smartphones, as well as asking them about injecting fresh funds into the struggling firm, Kyodo news agency said.
BANKING
UBS AG to lay off 10,000
Swiss banking giant UBS AG announced massive layoffs yesterday, along with huge losses in its third-quarter results, saying it aims to trim as many as 10,000 employees, or about 15 percent of its staff, to drastically shrink its ailing investment bank. Switzerland’s biggest bank said that as part of the cost-cutting drive to boost profitability, it “is likely to have a headcount of around 54,000” by 2015, down from its current 64,000 employees in 57 countries. The bank posted a net profit loss of 2.17 billion Swiss francs (US$2.31 billion), compared with a profit of SF1.02 billion during the same three-month period through September last year.
PETROLEUM
BP profit, dividends jump
Oil company BP has posted a solid increase in third-quarter profits that has allowed it to raise its dividend substantially. BP said yesterday that its profit of US$5.5 billion more than offset the US$1.34 billion loss reported in the previous three months, when the company wrote down the value of some assets. It was also 5 percent higher than last year’s equivalent of US$5.2 billion. Revenue of US$93.1 billion was also down from US$97.7 billion a year earlier. BP raised its quarterly dividend 12.5 percent to US$.0.9 per share.
NUCLEAR POWER
Hitachi to buy Horizon
Japan’s Hitachi Ltd has agreed to buy British atomic power company Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd from its German owners for £696 million (US$1.12 billion). The companies announced the deal yesterday, ending months of uncertainty after the 50-50 owners of Horizon, RWE AG and E.ON AG, abandoned plans to build nuclear power plants in Britain. Hitachi, Japan’s largest electrical machinery manufacturer, said it would continue to pursue plans to build new nuclear power stations at Wylfa in Wales and Oldbury-on-Severn in southwestern England. It plans to complete the acquisition by next month.
HOSPITALITY
Marriott doubling Asia hotels
Hotel operator Marriott International Inc said yesterday it planned to more than double the number of its properties in Asia in the next four years. Marriott said it expected to add 143 hotels to its 132 properties in Asia for a total of more than 80,000 rooms in 16 countries. The company said its Asian workforce should grow by 36,000 people to a total of 76,000 by 2016. Marriott’s brands include Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott and Renaissance.
INTERNET
Baidu profits rise 60%
Chinese search engine operator Baidu Inc (百度) said yesterday its latest quarterly profit rose 60 percent, but revenue growth slowed as the economy cooled. The Beijing-based company said that profit for the three months ending Sept. 30 was 3 billion yuan (US$478.6 million). Revenue rose 49.7 percent to 6.3 billion yuan, but that growth was down from the previous quarter’s 60 percent.
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
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)
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