BEVERAGES
Starbucks eyes tea drinkers
Starbucks Corp plans to increase its global tea business to US$3 billion over the next five years as it starts selling its new line of drinks, Teavana, across the Asia-Pacific region following the products’ debut in China last week. China is Starbucks’ fastest-growing market and the Seattle-based coffee chain is opening 500 stores per year in the world’s most populous nation, aiming for a total of 3,400 stores by 2019. The company is looking to China for growth momentum, honing in on China’s 63.2 billion yuan (US$9.5 billion) tea fixation, which is almost 10 times bigger than the nation’s coffee market. Starbucks’ new tea products might also align with Chinese consumers’ growing demand for products aimed at promoting a healthy lifestyle, it said.
BANKING
Oil-industry losses rise
Norway’s financial regulator said that banks exposed to oil-industry losses face a rise in impairments that would erode profits as the full effect of the slump in crude oil prices runs its course. However, banks will not see “a dramatic impairment of their solvency,” Norwegian Financial Supervisory Authority Director-General Morten Baltzersen said in Oslo. Norwegian banks have doubled their loan losses over the past year, writing down 0.34 percent of gross loans at the end of June. At DNB ASA, Norway’s biggest bank, SpareBank 1 SR-Bank ASA and SpareBank 1 SMN aggregate loan losses rose almost three-fold over the same period, according to Moody’s. Baltzersen said the watchdog has “emphasized” to the banks it oversees the necessity of building adequate capital buffers to absorb losses on risky exposures.
BANKING
Barroso to be investigated
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has opened a probe into whether his predecessor, Jose Manuel Barroso, breached EU ethics guidelines by joining US investment bank Goldman Sachs, where he is to advise on Britain leaving the EU. In a letter to the EU’s official watchdog, Juncker also said that Barroso would now be received at the commission as a lobbyist rather than as a former president. Juncker said his team would send Barroso “a letter asking him to provide clarification on his new responsibilities and the terms of reference of his contract, on which I will seek the advice of the Ad Hoc Ethical Committee.” Barroso’s appointment to the role as non-executive chairman and adviser at the US investment bank has caused a furore in the EU, with French President Francois Hollande deeming it “morally unacceptable.”
ENERGY
US solar installations soar
US solar installations surged 43 percent in the second quarter largely because of a wave of utility-scale projects going into service to take advantage of a tax credit that was due to expire. Developers added 2,051 megawatts in the quarter, up from 1,436 megawatts a year earlier, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). With an additional 7.8 gigawatts under construction, more solar capacity is on pace to be connected in the second half of this year than has ever come online in a single year, the Washington-based industry group said yesterday in a report produced with GTM Research. The biggest reason for the strong second-quarter growth was that utility-scale developers had scheduled record numbers of projects this year in anticipation of the federal investment tax credit expiring in December, SEIA vice president of markets and research Justin Baca said.
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],”