MACROECONOMICS
UK economy bounces back
The UK economy is “more than halfway” down the path to full recovery, but any interest rate rises are to be “limited” and “gradual,” Bank of England Governer Mark Carney said yesterday. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Carney declared that the economy was now undergoing genuine expansion following the economic crisis of 2008. “Wherever the finish line was in the depths of the crisis, we are much more than halfway towards that finish line now,” he said. “The expansion is proceeding, momentum is more assured; the very fact we have had consistent quarters of growth in line with, or slightly better than, our forecasts shows that.” Carney sought to reassure indebted householders that interest rates were not set to rise sharply any time soon. “There are big pockets of households who will be very sensitive to interest rate increases when they begin, so it makes sense to be gradual,” he said.
MACROECONOMICS
Serbia plans privatization
Serbia put 502 loss-making state-owned companies and media outlets on sale on Friday in a dramatic bid to cut the country’s rising budget deficit. The giant copper mine at Bor, one of the biggest in Europe, is among the businesses that the state privatization agency wants bids for by Sept. 14. Among the companies offered for sale on its Web site are fertilizer producer HIP Azotara Co, pharmaceutical giant Galenika, furniture maker Simpo and agricultural group PKB. A number of media outlets, including the oldest newspaper in the Balkans, Politika, and dozens of local radio and TV stations are also going under the hammer. In hopes of speeding up the sales, the agency said it had prepared plans for a number of different models of privatization.
ELECTRONICS
Samsung to stay as sponsor
Samsung has extended its top sponsorship contract as an Olympics worldwide partner to 2020, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Sunday. Samsung, who first signed up as a top sponsor with the IOC in 1998 and was a local sponsor at the 1988 Seoul Olympics as well, plans to support all Games up to and including the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The 2016 Olympic Games are to be held in Rio de Janeiro while the 2018 Winter Olympics are to be held in South Korea’s Pyeongchang. Other major sponsors, including McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Panasonic and Atos have signed up until 2020 or beyond.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Roche eyes Chugai share
Roche Holding AG is in talks to buy the almost 40 percent of Chugai Pharmaceutical Co it does not already own to gain full control of its Japanese partner for oncology and arthritis drugs, according to people familiar with the matter. Roche, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, plans to pay about US$10 billion to buy the remaining stake in Tokyo-based Chugai, the people said, asking not to be identified because the plans are private. The deal could be announced as early as this week, though no final decision has been made, one of the people said. Chugai yesterday denied talks with Roche are ongoing, saying in a statement it is “in no way in the process of reviewing any plan to become a wholly owned subsidiary of Roche.” Roche owned 62 percent of Chugai as of June 30 this year, according to the Swiss company’s annual report.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured