ELECTRONICS
Toshiba to investigate fall
Toshiba Corp fell the most in more than a year after the company said it would appoint a committee to investigate possible problems with its accounting. The maker of nuclear reactors, chips, appliances and electronics dropped 4.9 percent, the most since Jan. 31, to close at ¥487 in Tokyo trading. Toshiba will form a panel to examine the “reasonableness of estimates” when using the percentage-of-completion accounting method for some projects, it said on Friday after the market closed. The effect on earnings has not been determined, the Tokyo-based firm said in a statement. “The announcement doesn’t give us a good impression of Toshiba,” SMBC Nikko Securities Inc analyst Yukihiko Shimada said. “A sense of uncertainty will spread about the credibility of the company’s accounting.” The investigation will take about a month, the company said.
BANKING
Mizuho to hire RBS staff
Mizuho Financial Group Inc plans to hire as many as 200 people from Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS) in the US as part of its deal to buy loans from the British lender, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Japan’s third-biggest bank by market value is in talks to take on 130 to 200 employees from RBS’ US unit, including fixed-income and loan staff members, the person said, asking not to be named because the discussions are private. Mizuho said in February that it would buy the loans for about US$3 billion to gain access to corporate clients in North America. The portfolio consists of US$36.5 billion of loan commitments to about 200 investment-grade companies, of which US$3.2 billion has been drawn.
OIL
Indonesia to levy export tax
Indonesia, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, will impose export levies to fund biodiesel subsidies as well as replanting, research and development. Shippers will pay a levy of US$50 per tonne for palm oil and US$30 for processed products starting this month, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Sofyan Djalil said in Jakarta on Saturday. The government will keep the threshold for application of a separate export tax at US$750 per tonne, Djalil said. The nation boosted the mandated amount of palm blending in diesel to 10 percent from 7.5 percent in 2013, and ordered power plants to mix 20 percent last year. The biodiesel subsidy was raised in February to 4,000 rupiah (US$0.31) per liter from 1,500 rupiah and the mandated blending for diesel will increase to 15 percent.
REAL ESTATE
UK to boost first-time buyers
British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said he wants to double the number of first-time home buyers as opinion polls continued to show a tight race before the May 7 election. Osborne told the Sunday Telegraph that his Conservative Party would seek to increase the amount of first-time buyers to 500,000 per year by 2020 if it wins re-election. Osborne has sought to rejuvenate the housing market as a driver of the British economy with programs such as Help to Buy, in which the government assists those with small down payments to buy property. They would be extended to meet the new target, he said. Osborne said he also wants to boost home building. Asked if a lack of supply risked stoking a housing bubble, he said that the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee can step in to cool the market.
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