A deepening economic standoff between Russia and the West over the future of Ukraine has rippled through trading floors and boardrooms, with exporters scrambling to protect revenues and some global financial firms halting services.
US President Barack Obama’s threat to target major sections of the Russian economy should Russian President Vladimir Putin follow up his annexation of Crimea with further incursions in Ukraine has caused alarm in Europe.
The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs held a special briefing for about 130 companies, including drugs firm Novo Nordisk and brewer Carlsberg, on Friday after being inundated with inquiries about the business implications of the crisis.
In an e-mail to Reuters, Carlsberg’s chief executive said he was monitoring the situation closely and would act if sanctions had a direct impact on his drinks group’s business.
The company produces and sells local beers in both Ukraine and Russia.
“Until now it has been business as usual. We produce, sell and distribute our products to the market without problems,” chief executive officer Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen said. “Our focus is on our employees and our breweries.”
Lemken, a German manufacturer of plows and other farm machinery, has seen a big drop-off in orders from Russia, its second-biggest export market after France, in recent weeks as a sliding ruble raises their sale price.
With Moscow vowing to retaliate against the West’s sanctions, Anthony van der Ley, managing director of the family-run business, is taking no chances. He is sending machinery to Russia now in case the border closes or import charges are hiked.
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