ECONOMY
Vietnam forecasts growth
Vietnam’s leaders are forecasting strong economic growth even as the government is expected to fail to meet this year’s goal of restructuring nearly 300 state-owned companies. The government expects GDP expansion of 6.7 percent next year, a rise from 6.5 percent this year, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said in a speech to parliament yesterday. Vietnam is targeting average economic growth of 6.5 percent to 7 percent from next year to 2020. Inflation this year is expected to be 2 percent, the lowest in 15 years, he said.
BANKING
Morgan Stanley earnings fall
Turbulence in global markets hit Morgan Stanley’s business particularly hard in the third quarter, sending the bank’s earnings down 42 percent. The New York-based investment bank and wealth advisory firm earned US$939 million after payments to preferred shareholders for the three-month period ending last month, the bank said on Monday, compared with US$1.63 billion a year earlier. On a per-share basis, the bank earned US$0.48 per share, compared with US$0.84 a year earlier. That was far below the US$0.67 per share that analysts were looking for, according to FactSet. Overall, Morgan Stanley’s revenue was US$7.8 billion compared with US$8.9 billion the year before.
ENGINEERING
Technip wins contract
French oil engineering group Technip yesterday said it had won a contract from Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas to supply three hydrogen reformers at a production plant in Malaysia for Petronas. Technip indicated the deal in Johor State for state-owned Petronas’ Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development project was “significant,” in the region of between 50 million and 100 million euros (US$57million and US$112 million). The reformers, set to come on stream from 2018, allow production of hydrogen from methane using Technip’s top-fired steam methane reforming proprietary technology at Malaysia’s largest greenfield downstream site.
INTERNET
DEA agent sentenced
A former US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent on Monday was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for extortion and money laundering in connection with the Silk Road investigation. On top of his jail time, Carl Force was ordered to pay US$340,000 in restitution and to serve an additional three years of supervised release. Force, 46, in July pleaded guilty in a US federal court in San Francisco. He is one of two US federal agents so far who have been charged with crimes in connection with their roles in investigating Silk Road. Force had served as a DEA agent for 15 years.
AUTOMAKERS
Air bag probe might expand
US regulators on Monday said they could expand their investigation into Takata Corp air bag inflators beyond 11 automakers, as questions arose about whether vehicle design played a role in the devices posing a deadly risk to the public. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) head Mark Rosekind said his agency can add more auto manufacturers to the consent order that regulators announced with Takata in May. Tomorrow, NHTSA expects to make a case in public that it should coordinate the Takata recall to ensure that an estimated 23.4 million air bag inflators installed in 19.2 million US vehicles from 11 automakers are properly replaced.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”