CHINA
Box office passes US$6bn
The nation’s box office has grown by almost 50 percent so far this year to surpass US$6 billion in ticket sales. The Film Bureau said this year’s box office sales hit 40 billion yuan (US$6.3 billion) as of Thursday night, an increase of 48 percent year on year. China is the world’s No. 2 movie going market after the US. Chinese films accounted for more than 59 percent of box office revenue. Among the top earners were Monster Hunt, a Chinese live-action animation film, and Fast & Furious 7.
BRITAIN
Finance taxes top £66.5bn
The government collected £66.5 billion (US$99 billion) in taxes from the financial-services industry during this fiscal year, up 1.4 percent from a year earlier and the highest total since 2007, according to the local government body that oversees the main financial district. The industry contributed 11 percent of total government tax receipts, the City of London Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report published yesterday. Employment taxes generated £30 billion, the biggest share. Corporate tax revenue rose 41 percent to £7.6 billion, while the bank levy, a post-financial crisis measure based on the size of lenders’ balance sheets, generated £2.7 billion, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier.
EUROPEAN UNION
McDonald’s taxes probed
Regulators are to investigate tax deals between McDonald’s and Luxembourg which enabled the US chain to escape paying taxes on European franchise royalties from 2009, a move which could lead to hefty back taxes for the company. Confirming what sources with knowledge of the matter previously told Reuters, the bloc’s antitrust regulators said on Thursday they would launch the probe into arrangements that could be defined as illegal state aid. The EU competition enforcer said McDonald’s had not paid any corporate taxes in Luxembourg or the US on royalties paid by franchisees in Europe and Russia since 2009, as a result of two tax rulings by the Luxembourg authorities.
BEVERAGES
Glass in beer prompts recall
An Australian beer company owned by SABMiller PLC said yesterday it has recalled more than a million bottles of beer after broken glass was found in the product, a setback at the start of traditionally busy holiday season sales. The recall also presented an unwelcome distraction for SABMiller as it seeks to win over regulators around the world for a proposed US$106 billion buyout by rival Anheuser-Busch InBev. Melbourne-based Carlton & United Breweries, which SABMiller bought in 2011, said in a statement it had recalled a batch of its Carlton Dry beer because of an unspecified issue “as a result of packaging.”
COMPUTERS
IBM sets billion-dollar goal
IBM Corp has set an internal revenue goal for SoftLayer, its cloud-infrastructure business, of US$1 billion for next year, a person with knowledge of the matter said. That is an increase of about a quarter from the US$700 million to US$800 million in revenue the unit is expected to take in this year, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the financial information is still private. SoftLayer, which IBM acquired in 2013, had US$335 million in sales the year before the acquisition.
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],”