AUTOMAKERS
Toyota still world No. 1
Toyota Motor Corp’s global sales for the first nine months of the year reached 7.41 million vehicles, little changed from the previous year but outpacing General Motors (GM) to keep its lead as the world’s top-selling automaker. Detroit-based GM said earlier this month that its global sales for January through last month totaled 7.25 million vehicles, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier. Toyota’s vehicle sales for the first three quarters inched up 0.1 percent. Toyota said yesterday that it sold about 2.5 million cars, trucks and buses in the July-to-September quarter, led by overseas growth.
DIAMONDS
Alrosa to raise US$1.3bn
Russian state-owned diamond miner Alrosa expects to raise US$1.3 billion in a share sale, a figure at the bottom of a previously announced range, in a government privatization drive that has been hit by delays and weak investor sentiment. Market sources said US investors, including asset management group Lazard, were the biggest buyers of the shares, purchasing up to 60 percent of the 14 percent stake in Alrosa, which vies with Anglo American-owned De Beers as for the mantle of the world’s largest diamond miner. Alrosa’s offer price of 35 roubles per share puts the company’s market capitalization at 258 billion roubles (US$8.12 billion). It had been pegged at between 35 roubles and 38 roubles a share.
INTERNET
Sohu profit falls 20 percent
Sohu.com Inc (搜狐), operator of a popular Chinese Web portal, said yesterday its quarterly profit fell 20 percent due to higher expenses, but revenues rose. Sohu said it earned US$41 million in the three months ended Sept. 30 compared with US$51.5 million a year earlier. Revenues rose 29 percent over a year earlier to US$368 million. Profits were squeezed by a 53 percent rise in operating expenses due to more staff and higher costs for marketing, especially for mobile products and online games.
GREEN ENERGY
JAG to build 13MW station
JAG Energy Co, a unit of Japan Asia Group Ltd, will build a 13 megawatt solar power station in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.Construction will start in February and be completed in March 2015, Tokyo-based Japan Asia Group said in a statement yesterday. No financial terms were disclosed. Toshiba Corp will supply solar panels and electricity generated at the plant will be sold to Tokyo Electric Power Co, according to the statement.
CURRENCY
Russia cuts gold reserves
Russia reduced gold reserves for the first time in a year last month as Mexico cut holdings for a 17th straight month, according to IMF data. Russian reserves declined about 0.37 tonnes to 1,015.1 tonnes, while Canada’s holdings fell to 3 tonnes last month from 3.1 tonnes, and Mexico’s lost 0.1 tonne to 123.5 tonnes, the IMF data showed. Central-bank gold purchases may total 350 tonnes this year, the World Gold Council predicts, after they added 534.6 tonnes last year, the most since 1964.
INVESTMENT
G4S rejects US$2.5bn offer
G4S said it had rejected a £1.55 billion (US$2.5 billion) offer for its cash solutions business from British private equity group Charterhouse Capital Partners, saying the bid undervalued the unit. The company, the world’s largest security services firm, said yesterday that the nature and timing of the non-binding offer, which was made by the group on Tuesday last week, was “highly opportunistic.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six