RETAIL LUXURY
Piaget slows in China
Luxury Swiss watchmaker Piaget SA said its sales in China may grow by less than 10 percent this year — which would be the slowest in eight years — as Chinese consumers take advantage of the stronger yuan to travel abroad to buy premium goods. Piaget, which makes the US$53,000 Altiplano Skeleton 1200S, is also tempering the pace of store openings in China, Piaget’s Asia-Pacific president Dimitri Gouten said on Saturday in Shanghai. Sales may lag behind the double-digit growth rates since in 2005, he said. The watchmaker, which is owned by Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, has 20 boutiques in China and 50 around the world.
BANKING
Morgan Stanley settles suits
Morgan Stanley said it settled lawsuits brought by investors over two structured investment vehicles called Cheyne and Rhinebridge. The investors, led by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and King County, Washington, also agreed to drop their claims against Moody’s Investors Service Inc and Standard & Poor’s, the investors said in a notice filed on Friday in a US federal court in Manhattan. The plaintiffs claimed the defendants gave the vehicles inflated ratings in two separate suits filed in federal courts in Manhattan in 2008 and 2009.
OIL
Chevron unit resumes output
Chevron Corp has resumed operations on Friday in a unit at its refinery in Richmond in California’s Bay Area that was shut down after a massive fire last year. Company officials said that crews had begun feeding crude oil through the unit knocked out by the fire on Aug. 6 last year. Chevron chief financial officer Patricia Yarrington said the unit is expected to be fully operational during the second quarter.
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