TRANSPORTATION
Group to build Bangkok rail
A Japanese consortium will build an urban transit system in Bangkok, as part of Japan’s drive to expand exports of railway infrastructure to the rest of Asia, a report said yesterday. East Japan Railway, trading house Marubeni and electronics giant Toshiba have landed the deal, at an estimated price of about ¥40 billion (US$405 million), the business daily Nikkei Shimbun reported. Under the deal, ordered by Bangkok Metro Public Co, the consortium will construct a new 23km rail line in the Thai capital, the daily said, adding the rail operation is set to start in 2016. The Japanese group will supply 63 train cars and build the power grid, signals and rail yards, as well as 16 stations for the project. It will also provide maintenance services under a 10-year contract and about 20 technicians with operational expertise will be stationed in Bangkok.
TELECOMS
KT chairman resigns
The head of South Korea’s KT Corp — the country’s top fixed-line telephone operator and No. 2 mobile carrier — has offered to resign following a corruption probe, a report said yesterday. Chairman Lee Suk-chae has told his board of directors that he would step down, Yonhap news agency reported. On Friday, state prosecutors raided the offices of KT and the homes of its executives. The probe focuses on breach of trust charges filed against Lee, alleging the existence of a slush fund and poor investments that cost the firm hundreds of millions of dollars. Lee, a confidant of former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, has denied the allegations. KT’s third-quarter net profit plunged 63 percent from a year earlier to 136 billion won (US$128 million).
IRAN
China to finance projects
A report by a local media Web site says China has agreed to finance US$20 billion in development projects in the country using oil money not transferred to the Islamic Republic because of international sanctions. The tasnimnews Web site published a report on Saturday quoting prominent lawmaker Hasan Sobhaninia saying the deal was reached during talks between Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani and Chinese leaders. Larijani visited China this week and Sobhaninia accompanied the speaker. Government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nowbakht said last week that about US$22 billion dollars of the country’s oil money is stuck in China because of sanctions. The US and its allies have imposed oil and banking sanctions against the country over its disputed nuclear program. It frequently uses barter arrangements because of the sanctions. China is its top crude oil importer.
OFFICE SUPPLIES
OfficeMax purchase approved
Office Depot Inc’s purchase of OfficeMax Inc won approval from US antitrust regulators, clearing the way for the office-supply companies to create a single retailer to compete with Staples Inc. The US Federal Trade Commission voted to close its seven- month investigation into the merger, saying online retailing ensured competition in the retail market for office supplies, a statement yesterday said. The agency said the market has changed significantly since 1997, when it derailed Staples’s acquisition of Office Depot as anti-competitive. Consumers today rely on retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, in addition to Internet shopping for office products, the commission said. Office Depot and OfficeMax, the second and third-largest office-supply chains in the US, agreed in February to combine in a US$1.17 billion deal after losing sales to online rivals and to Staples.
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