BANKING
Goldman’s Schwartz retiring
Goldman Sachs is losing an architect of its Asia-Pacific division at the same time it confronts slowing activity in the region and a probe over its dealings in Malaysia. Mark Schwartz, 62, has decided to retire from his post as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific, a memo on Monday from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary Cohn said. Beijing-based Schwartz, a 27-year Goldman veteran, is to leave his post at the end of the year. He will serve as a senior director at Goldman following his departure from China. Schwartz played an “instrumental role” in building Goldman’s business in Asia, as chairman of the Asia-Pacific unit in Tokyo in the late 1990s and reprising the role again in 2012 from Beijing, the memo said.
AIRLINES
Kenya Air suspends strike
Kenya Airways jumped 6.5 percent in early trading yesterday, after pilots suspended a planned strike following talks between the union, airline and government. The pilots’ union KALPA had called for an indefinite strike to demand management changes at the loss-making airline, which is partly owned by the government and Air France-KLM. The union, airline executives and government held talks on Monday to avert action that officials said would hurt the carrier’s slow recovery. A new chairman was named after the talks, meeting part of the pilots’ demands.
ENTERTAINMENT
Disney drops Twitter bid
Walt Disney Co decided not to pursue a bid for Twitter Inc partly out of concern that bullying and other uncivil forms of communication on the social media site might soil the company’s wholesome family image, people familiar with management’s thinking said. The producer of family fare like Finding Dory had gone so far as to hire two investment banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Guggenheim Partners LLC, to help evaluate a bid for Twitter. Disney management also listened to a presentation about the business from Twitter executives, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.
GAMING
Ladbrokes Q3 revenue up
British bookmaker Ladbrokes yesterday reported a 12.1 percent rise in third-quarter net revenue, helped by a bookmaker-friendly and busy summer of sport. The company, which agreed an all-share merger with Gala Coral to create a £2.3 billion (US$3.4 billion) betting group, said net revenue for UK Retail rose 1.9 percent in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while European Retail net revenue rose 11.3 percent. Ladbrokes’ digital business revenue jumped 48.2 percent in the quarter. The company said its performance in the quarter was “supportive” of its full-year expectations.
SHIPBUILDING
STX bundled sale likely
A South Korean court handling the bankruptcy case of STX Offshore and Shipbuilding Co, yesterday said that it could announce the bundled sale of the company with its profitable French shipyard unit later this week. STX France, which specializes in building cruise ships, is the only profitable unit of STX Offshore, which filed for receivership in May. Originally it was assumed that the French unit would be sold off separately, but the bankruptcy court signaled its preference for selling the two companies as a package. “The court is seeking to sell STX Offshore together with STX France as one bundle,” said Choi Ung-young, a judge who acts as a spokesman for the Seoul Central District Insolvency Court.
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