BANKING
UBS profit jumps 53%
Swiss bank UBS AG yesterday said its earnings leapt by 53 percent in the second quarter, helped by strong performances in equities trading and wealth management. Net profit for the April-June period was 1.21 billion Swiss francs (US$1.26 billion), up from SF792 million a year earlier, the bank said. UBS cautioned that seasonal factors likely would affect third-quarter earnings and said that many “underlying macroeconomic challenges and geopolitical issues ... remain and are unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future.”
GERMANY
Business confidence rises
Business confidence in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, posted an unexpected rise this month as worries over Greece subsided. The Ifo think tank yesterday said that its monthly confidence index was up to 108 points for this month from 107.5 last month. Economists had expected a slight decline to 107.2. Ifo said that managers’ assessment of their current situation and their outlook for the next six months both improved, defying expectations that they would slip.
CAMERAS
Canon first-half profit falls
Japan’s Canon Inc yesterday said that its net profit fell 20.5 percent in the first six months of the year, as smartphones increasingly take a bite out of demand for digital cameras. The photography and office equipment giant reported a ¥102.13 billion (US$830 million) profit for the January-June period, while operating profit fell 11.5 percent to ¥170.90 billion. Sales ticked up 2 percent to ¥1.83 trillion from a year earlier. Canon also trimmed its full-year forecast to a net profit of ¥245 billion, down from an earlier ¥255 billion projection.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last