INDIA
Singh to ink deals in Japan
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is set to sign deals for US$15 billion in infrastructure projects on a visit to Japan this week, a report said yesterday. The trip, which starts today, will see Singh hold talks with his Japanese counterpart Yoshihiko Noda and lunch with Japanese business leaders, said officials at the Japanese foreign ministry and industry lobby Keidanren (Japan Business Federation). A total of 19 infrastructure projects will benefit from the deals, which will involve Japanese manufacturers and trading houses, the Nikkei Shimbun reported. The agreements will be signed at summit talks between Singh and Noda tomorrow, the paper said.
COMPUTERS
AMD denies seeking sale
Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-largest maker of personal-computer processors, said it is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or a significant sale of assets. “AMD’s board and management believe that the strategy the company is currently pursuing to drive long-term growth by leveraging AMD’s highly differentiated technology assets is the right approach to enhance shareholder value,” spokesman Drew Prairie said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday. The statement came after Reuters reported that AMD hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, including a potential sale of the company or its patent portfolio.
INTERNET
Zynga loses finance chief
Finance chief David Wehner is leaving Zynga Inc to join Facebook, the troubled San Francisco-based online game company said on Tuesday. His exact title will be vice president of corporate finance and business planning, Facebook said. Chief accounting officer Mark Vranesh is replacing Wehner as chief financial officer, returning to the post he held from 2008 to 2010, while Zynga was still a private company. Zynga also reshuffled its executive ranks, a move chief executive Mark Pincus said puts the company in a position for “long-term growth.”
TELECOMS
SingTel cuts forecast
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd cut its full-year sales forecast on declining Australian revenue after posting second-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates. Revenue will fall by a “low-single digit level” in the 12 months ending March, compared with a previous forecast for an increase, SingTel said in a statement yesterday. Net income fell 1.6 percent to S$868 million (US$710 million) in the July-September quarter, missing the S$953 million average of three estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Competition in Australia is crimping growth at Optus, SingTel’s biggest unit by sales, as the Singapore dollar’s appreciation against the Indonesian rupiah and the Thai baht cut the value of earnings from affiliates.
SOUTH KOREA
Jobless rate drops
The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in more than five years last month, despite a rise in the number of young people out of work, official figures showed yesterday. The seasonally adjusted jobless rate of 3 percent, down from 3.1 percent in September, was the lowest since February 2008, according to Statistics Korea. The unadjusted jobless rate fell to 2.8 percent last month from 2.9 percent in September. However, the number of unemployed under the age of 29 rose to 6.9 percent from 6.7 percent in September and the same 6.7 percent in October last year.
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
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
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the