ENERGY
Shell names new CEO
Royal Dutch Shell PLC yesterday appointed its downstream director Ben van Beurden to replace Peter Voser as CEO when Voser retires next year. Van Beurden’s promotion marks a return to a Dutchman leading the Netherlands-British multinational after the tenure of Voser, who is Swiss. Van Beurden has worked for Shell’s upstream and downstream businesses in Europe, Africa, Asia and the US. He will take over from Voser on Jan. 1. Voser will retire at the end of March after 29 years with the company.
CONGLOMERATES
LVMH acquires Loro Piana
French luxury conglomerate LVMH will assume control of Italian exclusive ready-to-wear fashion group Loro Piana by buying an 80 percent stake for about 2 billion euros (US$2.5 billion), the company said in a statement on Monday. LVMH said that the Loro Piana family would keep the remaining 20 percent share, and that the Italian company’s current directors, Sergio and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, would keep their posts. It said the change in ownership would have a positive earnings effect as of the first year. Loro Piana’s turnover for this year is expected to reach about 700 million euros, while its pre-tax profit is forecast to come in at about 150 million euros.
INTERNET
Hulu gets more bids: report
The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that several bidders have stepped up to vie for Hulu, an online video Web site that Internet pioneer Yahoo was said to be eyeing as an acquisition. The Journal cited unnamed sources as saying that Hulu had several suitors, including satellite television company DirecTV and a partnership led by US telecom titan AT&T. A Friday deadline had been set for submitting final bids for Hulu, which was launched in 2007 in a partnership between Comcast, 21st Century Fox and The Walt Disney Co.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla to join NASDAQ
Tesla Motors Inc, the world’s best-performing automotive stock this year, will join the NASDAQ-100 Index next week, filling the spot vacated by Oracle Corp, which is moving to the New York Stock Exchange. The electric-car maker will be added to the gauge, which tracks the biggest firms on the NASDAQ, before the start of trading on Monday, NASDAQ OMX Group Inc said in a statement on Monday. Shares of Tesla have more than tripled this year in New York as the popularity of its new Model S sedan helped the company turn profitable for the first time.
FOOD
Abbott to cut formula prices
Abbott Laboratories will cut the prices of its main infant formula products in China by as much as 12 percent, the fourth foreign company to do so in a week after the government began a probe into possible price-fixing. Abbott will reduce the prices of products such as Similac and Pediasure by 4 percent to 12 percent in China, Pamela Harrison, a spokeswoman for the company, said by telephone yesterday. The Abbott Park, Illinois-based company joins Nestle SA, Danone and Dutch producer Royal FrieslandCampina NV in lowering prices after the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, started a probe into their pricing of milk powder. The investigation includes Mead Johnson Nutrition Co and domestic firm Biostime International Holdings (合生元國際控股).
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by