BANKING
JPMorgan cutting jobs
JPMorgan Chase plans to eliminate 8,000 jobs this year as its mortgage business shrinks and the giant bank aims to control costs at its branches. About half of those job cuts had already been announced. JPMorgan Chase now plans to cut more jobs —about 3 percent of its workforce of 251,000 — as it tries to reduce US$2 billion in consumer banking expenses by the end of 2016. However, the bank said it would add about 3,000 jobs in other areas this year. The new job cuts announced on Tuesday are in its mortgage and retail banking businesses. “We’re seeing much lower volumes as we’re going through the first quarter of 2014,” said Gordon Smith, who runs the company’s consumer and community banking business.
AVIATION
Airbus profit jumps 22%
European aerospace giant Airbus Group yesterday announced a 22 percent year-on-year rise in net profit for last year, despite one-off charges related to its new A350 wide-body aircraft. Net profit was 1.5 billion euros (US$2.06 billion) while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization rose by 21 percent to 3.6 billion euros, it said in a statement. Full-year revenue was up 5 percent to 59.3 billion euros, driven by increased aircraft deliveries. The group said it “expects moderate return on sales growth” this year and “confirms its 2015 return on sales target of 7-8 percent.” The final quarter of last year included a 434 million euro charge “to reflect the higher level of costs on the A350 XWB program,” the group said.
INTERNET
Apple issues security patch
Apple Inc has issued fixes for a security flaw in its Macintosh computers that allows hackers to intercept data such as e-mail, patching a major and embarrassing glitch that came to light several days ago. The security update for users of Apple’s OS X computer operating software follows a fix issued for iPhones last week, meaning all Apple device users now have access to the patch. The flaw allowed attackers with access to a mobile user’s network, such as a shared unsecured wireless service offered by a cafe, to see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Google Inc’s Facebook.
BANKING
RBS bonuses approved
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has received approval from Treasury agency UK Financial Investments to pay about £550 million (US$920 million) in staff bonuses for last year, Sky News reported late on Tuesday. Sky said the bank is expected to disclose the proposed bonuses when it announces its annual earnings, estimated at a loss of about £8 billion. Chief executive officer Ross McEwan is expected to today unveil a strategic review of the bank’s investment banking and international operations in which the group could shed up to a quarter of its 120,000 workforce, according to sources who spoke to Reuters. The bank is expected to have reduced last year’s bonus pool by at least £25 million under a commitment it gave 12 months ago, Sky said.
TELECOM
Line may hit user target
Line Corp, the messaging service controlled by South Korea’s Naver Corp, may meet its target of having 500 million users by year’s end as the company considers whether to hold an initial public offering. About 85 percent of the application’s current 370 million users are based outside Japan, Tokyo-based Line said in a statement yesterday.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts