STOCKS
Samsung SDS set for listing
Samsung SDS has set a preliminary price for its share listing, valuing the firm at about 15.47 trillion won (US$14.88 billion), a person with direct knowledge of the matter said ahead of what may be South Korea’s biggest listing this year. The sale of shares in Samsung SDS, the IT services affiliate of Samsung Group, could raise at least 1 trillion won, local media have reported. A spokesman for Samsung SDS said the firm is expected to list sometime in November, but declined to provide more details. The sprawling Samsung Group, South Korea’s biggest conglomerate, is restructuring its complex ownership ahead of an eventual generational succession. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Chairman Lee Kun-hee, 72, the group patriarch, has been hospitalised since suffering a heart attack in May.
ZIMBABWE
IMF says no to Harare loans
The IMF has scotched suggestions that the cash-strapped country could get fresh financial aid, saying it must first service old debts. Domenico Fanizza, a senior official at the IMF’s Africa department, said the Washington-based lender “by its law” could not give more support until President Robert Mugabe’s government makes up missed repayments. The country is saddled with debts of more than US$10 billion, according to an Agence France-Presse tally of Ministry of Finance figures, and has stuttered in making repayments.
STOCK MARKETS
WSE freezes merger idea
The Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE), central Europe’s leading market, on Tuesday said it has decided to put the brakes on a possible merger with its Vienna-based counterpart. “Following an in-depth analysis of available options of regional growth and taking into account the high growth potential of the Polish economy and its capital market, WSE has decided to focus on organic growth at this time,” the exchange said in a statement. “Therefore, WSE is not considering a capital alliance with [the Vienna-based] CEE Stock Exchange Group AG at this time,” it added, while leaving open the option of a merger somewhere down the line.
AUTOMAKERS
Hyundai staff strike for pay
About 40,000 Hyundai workers have launched a partial strike over a wage row fuelled by union anger at the South Korean carmaker’s US$10 billion bid for a plot of land in Seoul. Workers at the main Hyundai plant in the southern city of Ulsan and others across the country walked off their jobs for two hours on Tuesday and yesterday, a union spokesman said. “We plan to extend it to four hours beginning Thursday,” the spokesman told reporters. The partial strike — the second in a month — came amid stalled negotiations over whether regular bonuses should be considered part of the basic wage that is used to calculate rates for overtime, holiday shifts and pensions.
SMARTPHONES
BlackBerry to launch phone
BlackBerry was set to launch an unconventional new smartphone dubbed the Passport yesterday, as it embarks on potentially the most critical phase of its long turnaround. The one-time smartphone industry pioneer recently concluded a three-year-long restructuring process and has largely halted the bleed, but it is now up to chief executive John Chen (程守宗) to prove that the company’s new devices and services are capable of generating sustainable new streams of revenue and returning it to profitability.
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