AVIATION
Lufthansa pilots to strike
Pilots at Germany’s biggest airline, Lufthansa, yesterday said they would go on strike today — for the fourth time in three weeks — over changes to early retirement rules, a union said. The eight-hour walkout will go on from 9am to 5pm and hit long-haul flights, the pilots’ union Cockpit said in a statement yesterday. No flights will take off from Frankfurt, the airline’s biggest hub, it added. “As Lufthansa management has not put forward an offer that is suitable for a compromise, we see ourselves forced to take further action,” it said. The airline has been hit by several rounds of industrial action over its plans to change the early retirement policy. A strike on Wednesday last week grounded 110 flights across Europe, affecting about 13,500 passengers. The three walkouts taken together have forced the cancelation of 475 flights in total, almost entirely on domestic and European routes.
INDIA
Wholesale inflation slows
Wholesale price inflation slowed to its lowest level in almost five years last month, data showed yesterday, after the right-wing government came to power pledging to wrestle down crippling prices. The Wholesale Price Index increased 3.74 percent year on year — far below market forecasts of about 4.4 percent — and sharply lower than 5.19 percent the previous month. It was also the lowest since October 2009, thanks largely to a drop in fuel and metals prices, the data showed. The figures will come as welcome news for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which swept to power in May promising to tackle high inflation that has long angered voters. They also reduce pressure on the hawkish central bank to hike already-steep interest rates that businesses say have hindered investment.
TOURISM
TUI boards advise merger
TUI AG and TUI Travel PLC lifted the benefits they aim to reap from their planned all-share merger after the boards of both tour operators recommended their shareholders accept the offer. The combined entity, valued at about 6.5 billion euros (US$8.4 billion), will realize 100 million euros from the combination via tax savings and benefits from eliminating overlapping functions and separate stock exchange listings, compared with 80 million euros projected previously, TUI Travel said in a statement yesterday. The deal would remove the biggest obstacle in TUI AG’s corporate structure, one-and-a-half years after Friedrich Joussen took over as chief executive officer. Joussen, who restored the company’s ability to pay a dividend after investors came away empty-handed for years, plans to create the world’s largest tourism business and run it together with TUI Travel CEO Peter Long until taking the sole helm from 2016.
CLOTHING RETAIL
H&M sales rise 16 percent
Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) AB, Europe’s second-biggest clothing retailer, reported a 16 percent gain in third-quarter sales after last month’s revenue exceeded estimates. Sales last month rose 19 percent, stated in local currency terms, the Stockholm-based company said yesterday in a statement. The average estimate in an SME Direkt survey was for expansion of 12.9 percent. New store formats and online expansion are fueling growth at the retailer, which had 3,341 stores as of the end of last month. H&M is also broadening its geographic coverage amid increasing competition from online retailers and budget chains. Total third-quarter sales rose 21 percent to 45.3 billion kronor (US$6.3 billion), the firm said yesterday.
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],”