BANKING
ANZ to cut overseas jobs
Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) Ltd, Australia’s third-biggest bank by market value, is cutting about 30 jobs in its institutional banking unit. The affected positions are based in New York, London and Asia, and are mostly in customer relationship roles, ANZ Bank spokesman Stephen Ries said in an e-mailed statement. Australia’s most Asia-focused lender is in the process of restructuring its operations and shrinking its Asian businesses. The bank last month said it had reduced its Singapore headcount by about 300 from a year earlier, but remained committed to having an institutional banking presence across 14 Asian countries..
TELECOM
Ericsson announces losses
Swedish mobile networks company Ericsson AB yesterday said that “negative industry trends have further accelerated,” contributing to a third-quarter loss for the company of 233 million kronor (US$26.2 million). The loss compared with a net profit of 3.08 billion kronor during the same three-month period last year. The group said revenue dropped 14 percent from 59.2 billion kronor to 51.1 billion kronor amid fierce Asian competition and a slowing telecommunications equipment market. It added that the industry trends indicate to “a somewhat weaker than normal seasonal sales growth between the third and fourth quarters.”
AUTOMAKERs
Daimler profits soar
German automaker Daimler AG yesterday said that stronger sales of its technology-loaded Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan and sports utility vehicles helped third-quarter earnings swell by 13 percent. Net profit during the July to September period rose from 2.42 billion to 2.73 billion euros (US$2.63 billion to US$2.97 billion) in the same quarter a year earlier. The increase came on a revenue rise of 4 percent to 38.6 billion euros, the company said. Favorable exchange rate developments boosted earnings, in addition to stronger sales. The company would use its momentum to move forward with its electric vehicles.
UNITED STATES
New buyers boost real estate
Home resales surged last month after two straight months of declines as first-time buyers stepped into the market, pointing to underlying momentum in the economy. The National Association of Realtors said existing home sales rose 3.2 percent to an annual rate of 5.47 million units. That was well above economists’ expectations for an increase to a 5.35 million-unit pace. First-time buyers accounted for 34 percent of transactions last month, the largest share since July 2012. Still, the share remains well below the 40 percent to 45 percent that economists say is required for a robust housing market.
ENGLAND
Sales optimism growing
Consumer confidence has rebounded since the Brexit vote, despite the impending squeeze on household budgets from rising prices, a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey found. A gauge of expectations for the next 12 months returned to positive territory last month as more consumers predicted they wouldd be better off than worse off, PwC said yesterday. Londoners and young people were the most upbeat, the survey of 2,050 consumers found. The report suggest consumers would continue to support an economy facing an uncertain year as Britain prepares for negotiations to leave the EU and the weak pound stokes inflation.
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