STOCKS
Sell order action planned
The Shanghai Stock Exchange is to take measures against brokerages including a UBS AG unit and China International Capital Corp (CICC, 中國國際金融) for sell orders that caused stocks to plunge on Dec. 20, a bourse official said. UBS Securities Co, CICC, Guotai Junan Securities Co (國泰君安證券) and Orient Securities Co (東方證券) face penalties for failing to exercise professional judgment and diligently review orders from Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor accounts controlled by UBS, Citigroup Inc, HSBC Holdings PLC and Martin Currie Investment Management Ltd, the Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday. The exchange official, who asked not to be identified because of the bourse’s rules, said steps were planned and confirmed the accuracy of the newspaper’s report, without commenting further.
BANKING
UK could sell rest of Lloyds
The British government could sell off all of its £18.4 billion (US$30.34) stake in the Lloyds banking group next year, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing unnamed sources. The newspaper reported that the entire government holding could be sold off in the next 12 months in a combination of retail and institutional offerings. “Post-results is when a further institutional offering would make most sense. After that, the thinking is an autumn sale, combining an institutional and a retail segment, is a realistic prospect,” a source was quoted as saying by the newspaper. The UK government has already sold off 6 percent of its stake in the partly nationalized bank, raising over £3.2 billion in September. The government currently holds around 33 percent of the bank.
BANKING
Indian risk increases
The risk to India’s banking industry rose in the six months through September as bad loans surged and profitability slumped, the central bank said. The average gross bad-loan ratio may increase to 4.6 percent of total lending by September next year in a “baseline scenario,” the Reserve Bank of India said in a financial stability report posted on its Web site yesterday. The ratio advanced to 4.2 percent as of Sept. 30 from 3.4 percent in March, the report showed. Sour loans at Indian lenders are rising as the South Asian nation’s economy slows and clearances for various infrastructure projects are delayed, the RBI said. The central bank predicts India’s economy will expand 5 percent in the 12 months through March 31, the same pace as the last fiscal year, which was the weakest in a decade.
AVIATION
China airline orders planes
China’s Zhejiang Loong Airlines (浙江長龍航空) has ordered 20 Airbus planes of the A320 series, firming up a deal made in September, Airbus announced in a statement on Sunday. The carrier which is based in Hangzhou, east China, had been given the green light for the transport of passengers when it signed the Memorandum of Understanding with Airbus at the 15th Aviation Expo China in Beijing. Zhejiang Loong Airlines’s order concerns 11 A320ceo and nine A320neo. The airline plans to offer services within a range of four hours around Hangzhou. Airbus says it had 2,523 firm orders of the aircraft at the end of last month. The company markets the A320 family, a single-aisle jetliner (composed of the A318, A319, A320 and A321) as “the world’s most eco-efficient single-aisle product line.”
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”