ELECTRONICS
Seoul charges LG executives
South Korean prosecutors charged three executives of LG Electronics Inc with vandalizing high-end washing machines from Samsung Electronics Co at retail shops in Germany last year. Jo Seong-jin, head of the home appliance division, was indicted, along with Cho Han-ki and Chun Myung-woo, LG said in a statement citing Jo’s lawyer, Ham Yoon-keun. The incident occurred ahead of the IFA show in Berlin in September, when a number of Samsung Crystal Blue washing machines, which sell for more than US$2,000, were damaged. The charges are the latest black eye for South Korea’s chaebols, or family-run conglomerates, which dominate the nation’s corporate landscape and have been subject to a long-running debate about their power and influence.
EMPLOYMENT
Tesco to fire 10,000: report
Troubled British supermarket giant Tesco PLC could axe as many as 10,000 jobs under plans to shut 43 stores in a company-wide overhaul, according to British media. Tesco, which revealed the closures in January last year, has already confirmed that 2,000 jobs are under threat, but the Sunday Telegraph reported that the figure could be five times higher, as boss Dave Lewis attempts to reverse sliding profits. About 6,000 of the job losses would be from head office and the 43 store closures, with the rest coming from an overhaul of the supermarket’s operating practices, according to the report. Tesco, which has a British workforce of more than 310,000, had unveiled plans to shut unprofitable branches, sell assets and axe its shareholder dividend in a bid to revive its fortunes after an accounting scandal. The group hopes to cut head office costs by 30 percent, saving £250 million (US$384.8 million).
SOFTWARE
Infosys to buy Panaya
Infosys Ltd, India’s second-largest software services company, agreed to buy Panaya Ltd for US$200 million to help customers automate more business processes. The deal for closely held Panaya is expected to close before the end of next month, Bengaluru, India-based Infosys said in a statement. The price includes equity and assumed debt. Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka is pushing his firm into artificial intelligence technologies and retraining some of the company’s almost 170,000 workers to help clients automate tasks. The former chief technology officer at SAP AG is counting on the moves to help lower costs and allow the company to post industry-leading growth next year. “The acquisition of Panaya is a key step in renewing and differentiating our service lines,” Sikka said in the statement.
BANKING
Bankers’ pay cut since crisis
Investment bankers earn 25 percent less on average than they did before the financial crisis, while asset managers are taking home 22 percent more, a research firm. Average annual pay for investment bank employees has declined to US$288,000 since 2006, compared with US$263,000 at asset-management firms, New Financial said in a report this month. The sample for the report includes 12 investment banks and 18 asset managers, it said. “One reason for the increase in pay in asset management is that it has remained constant relative to revenues over the past decade,” New Financial said. “At investment banks, staff are taking a shrinking portion of a shrinking pot.” European and US regulators have tightened pay rules to prevent a repeat of the risk-taking that contributed to the 2008 global financial crisis.
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