BANKING
World Bank to cut staff
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced a net 250 job cuts on Thursday — the first major job reductions under his reorganization plans at the bulked-up development bank. Kim said in an internal memo that the bank would eliminate about 500 positions in its Institutional, Governance and Administrative units — including operations like finance and technology and oversight. In addition, about 70 currently unstaffed positions will be eliminated, but the cuts will be offset in part by adding 250 to 300 jobs in the bank’s operations center in Chennai, India.
ELECTRONICS
Sony quarterly loss expands
Sony Corp says losses for July-September ballooned to ¥136 billion (US$1.2 billion) as the company’s troubled mobile phone division reported huge red ink. The Tokyo-based maker of the PlayStation 4 video game machines, Spider-Man movies and Xperia smartphones had reported a ¥19.6 billion loss for the same period a year earlier. The results yesterday came despite a 7 percent increase in quarterly sales to ¥1.9 trillion as performance improved in cameras, TVs and game businesses. Sony stuck to its forecast for the year through March next year of a ¥230 billion loss.
ELECTRONICS
Panasonic profit halved
Panasonic Corp yesterday said its net profit plunged 52.2 percent to ¥80.9 billion for the six months to September, but it lifted its full-year forecast partially due to strong solar panel sales. The Osaka-based company raised its full-year net profit forecast to ¥175 billion from an earlier estimate of ¥140 billion for the fiscal year to next March.
BANKING
Citi profit falls on legal costs
Citigroup Inc on Thursday slashed its third-quarter earnings by US$600 million due to higher legal costs, citing “rapidly evolving” regulatory probes expected to result in more large settlements. Citi, which bested analyst forecasts with its Oct. 14 earnings report, lowered quarterly net income to US$2.8 billion from the originally reported US$3.4 billion due to the additional charge. The US$600 million is on top of the US$951 million in legal expenses previously reported, which itself was an increase from US$677 million in the year-ago period.
BANKING
RBS sets funds for FX probe
Britain’s state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has set aside £400 million (US$639 million) to settle allegations of price-rigging in foreign exchange markets, it said yesterday. RBS revealed in a results statement that litigation and conduct costs for the third quarter “included £400 million of potential conduct costs following investigations into the foreign exchange market.” RBS also said that net profit rebounded to £896 million in the three months to the end of September, buoyed partly by cost-cutting, after a net loss of £828 million in the same period last year.
BEVERAGES
AB InBev profit up 5.5%
AB InBev SA, the world’s largest beer maker, has reported a 5.5 percent increase in earnings for the third quarter, as higher selling prices more than made up for volume declines in Europe and Asia. Net profit at the brewer of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Corona was US$2.5 billion, compared with US$2.37 billion in the same period a year earlier. Revenues were up 2.3 percent to US$12.2 billion, as volumes fell 2.6 percent, but the company’s revenue per beer increased by 4.9 percent.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to