SOUTH KOREA
Lotte Group boss sought
Lotte Group yesterday said that prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant for its chairman, Shin Dong-bin, the latest twist in a sweeping criminal probe into the nation’s fifth-largest conglomerate. A prosecution source with direct knowledge of the matter said the warrant has been sought as part of an investigation into suspected embezzlement and breach of trust. Lotte Group did not say why the arrest warrant was requested, and did not say where Shin is.
AVIATION
MRJ aircraft flies to US
Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp said a test aircraft took off yesterday on its third attempt to fly to the US after aborting flights twice last month due to problems with air-conditioning sensors. The Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) left Nagoya Airport at 1:28pm, said Kenichi Takemori, a Nagoya-based spokesman for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd, the parent of Mitsubishi Aircraft. He declined to say what route the plane would take. Success with the latest attempt may provide a boost to the program that is crucial for Japan’s efforts to break the regional-jet duopoly of Brazil’s Embraer SA and Canada’s Bombardier Inc.
BANKING
Deutsche Bank shares fall
Deutsche Bank AG shares yesterday dropped to a record low amid concerns that mounting legal bills, including a looming fine over its pre-crisis mortgage bond business, may force it to raise capital. The shares dropped 6.3 percent to 10.70 euros at 10:14am in Frankfurt. A potential US$14 billion bill to settle a US probe into residential mortgage-backed securities is more than twice the amount that the bank has set aside for litigation. The lender also faces inquiries into legal issues, including currency manipulation, precious metals trading and billions of dollars in transfers out of Russia, complicating CEO John Cryan’s efforts to bolster profitability and capital ratios. A German government spokesman said there was no reason to speculate about aid to the bank.
PRECIOUS METALS
Gold retreats in Singapore
Gold retreated after its biggest weekly advance in two months, as the US dollar erased losses, dimming the metal’s appeal as an alternative investment. Bullion for immediate delivery fell 0.2 percent to US$1,334.70 an ounce by 2:42pm in Singapore after a 2.1 percent gain last week, the most since the period to July 29, according to Bloomberg generic pricing. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the greenback against 10 major peers, pared an intraday decline of 0.2 percent to trade little changed.
BANKING
France seeks UBS data
French tax authorities have asked Switzerland to hand over client information for about 45,000 bank accounts as part of a probe into alleged tax fraud, Le Parisien daily said yesterday. Banking giant UBS in July said that the Swiss authorities had asked it to provide client information following a French request for international administrative assistance in May. The demand concerns former and current clients living in France, based on data from 2006 to 2008. Le Parisien yesterday published extracts from a letter dated May 11 from French authorities. The assets of those listed totaled more than 11 billion Swiss francs (US$11 billion), the report said. France opened a probe into UBS after former employees blew the whistle over its alleged system of setting up dual accounts to hide the movement of capital into Switzerland. UBS denies the accusations.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by