AIRLINES
Qatar ups stake in UK peer
Qatar Airways exploited the post-Brexit slump in shares at British Airways owner IAG to increase its shareholding to 20 percent, the Gulf carrier announced yesterday. In a statement, Qatar Airways CEO Akbar al-Baker said his company had raised its 15.01 percent stake to 20.01 percent because of the current state of the market. “The recent market valuation of one of the world’s leading airline groups has provided what we believe is an attractive opportunity to increase our shareholding in IAG,” al-Baker said.
BANKING
Nedbank’s growth slows
Nedbank Group Ltd, the South African lender controlled by Old Mutual PLC, said first-half profit growth slowed to 2.1 percent after accounting for losses associated with its stake in Ecobank Transnational Inc. Net income rose to 5.44 billion rand (US$393.99 million) from 5.33 billion rand in the same period last year, the Johannesburg-based lender said in a statement yesterday. That compares with a 16 percent expansion in the same period last year. Earnings per share excluding one-time items climbed 1.6 percent to 11.19 rand and the interim dividend increased 6.1 percent to 5.7 rand per share. Nedbank and its peers are battling a South African economy on the brink of a recession, interest rates at their highest level since 2010 and inflation outside the central bank’s target range. Profit at its biggest investment outside of South Africa, Ecobank, declined after lower oil prices and rising impairments hurt lenders in Nigeria. Nedbank’s parent firm plans to spin off the lender by 2018 as part of a plan to split Old Mutual’s business into four units.
BREWERIES
Heineken beats forecasts
Heineken NV, the world’s third-largest brewer, reported first-half profit that beat analysts’ estimates and reiterated its forecast for year-on-year profit margin expansion. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes rose 12.6 percent to 1.71 billion euros (US$1.91 billion) in the first half, Amsterdam-based Heineken said yesterday in a statement. That compares with 1.67 billion euros, the median of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. “Our first-half performance reflects a very good first quarter, also helped by softer comparatives,” Heineken CEO Jean-Francois van Boxmeer said in the statement. “Whilst Africa Middle East and Eastern Europe continued to be challenging, performance was strong in some key developing markets, such as Vietnam and Mexico.” Heineken has forecast that Asia will pace its sales growth amid a stagnant beer market in Europe and a weakening consumer environment in Russia and Nigeria due to low oil prices.
FINANCE
MAS steps up funds scrutiny
Singapore’s central bank yesterday formally launched a unit to fight money laundering, strengthening the financial hub’s safeguards against illicit fund flows. Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) officials have said plans to create the special unit predated a continuing scandal involving state fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) in Malaysia and banks operating in Singapore. “But these recent developments have indeed underscored the merits of bringing together supervisory resources from across MAS to give a centralized focus on combating money laundering,” a MAS spokesman said in June when it announced the creation of the unit. Singapore last year opened an investigation into fund flows linked to 1MDB. In May this year it expelled Switzerland’s BSI Bank for “gross misconduct” related to the Malaysian fund.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts