BANKING
Standard fires top executives
Standard Chartered PLC dismissed the head of its private-equity business and is weighing plans to shutter the unit over the next two years, according to people familiar with the matter. The lender this week ousted Standard Chartered Private Equity chief executive officer Joseph Stevens, and ASEAN regional director Bert Kwan, said the people, who requested anonymity as the matter is not public. The firm’s chief executive officer Bill Winters, who had discussed selling the business to the unit’s managers, now favors winding it down after disagreements on price, the people said. Shaun Gamble, a spokesman for the London-based bank, declined to comment beyond a September statement that Standard Chartered is “looking at non-core businesses, or those that do not sit within our tightened risk tolerance.”
SHIPBUILDERS
Firms bid for S Korea’s STX
Four companies submitted bids to buy South Korea’s troubled STX Offshore & Shipbuilding Co Ltd, a Seoul bankruptcy court said on Friday, with media reports suggesting they included three European firms. A court spokesman declined to identify the bidders, or clarify what precisely they had bid on. Buyers were offered the choice of buying STX and its profitable French unit separately or as a package. The Seoul Economic Daily, citing industry sources, said the bidders included Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri, Dutch group Damen and French state-controlled naval shipbuilder DCNS. Once South Korea’s No. 4 shipbuilder, STX sought a court-led restructuring in May. Creditor banks have stumped up more than 4 trillion won (US$3.5 billion) to bail the company out, but its total debts stood at 7.3 trillion won as of June.
MULTINATIONALS
Berkshire Q3 profit falls
Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Friday reported a 24 percent year-on-year drop in third-quarter profit because last year’s results were helped by a huge paper gain on the value of its Kraft Heinz Food Co stake. The conglomerate recorded solid results at most of the more than 90 companies it owns, posting net income of US$7.2 billion, or US$4,379 per Class A share, in the quarter. That is down from US$9.43 billion, or US$5,737 per A share, a year ago when it recorded a US$4.4 billion after-tax gain from the merger of Kraft and Heinz. Revenue at the Omaha, Nebraska-based company grew slightly to US$59.07 billion in the quarter, up from US$58.99 billion last year.
BANKING
Commerzbank sees profit
Commerzbank AG said it expects to post a full-year profit after costs tied to chief executive officer Martin Zielke’s overhaul pushed Germany’s second-largest lender into a third-quarter loss. The net loss of 288 million euros (US$320.89 million) compares with a profit of 235 million euros a year earlier, the Frankfurt-based company said in a statement on Friday. In the third quarter, the bank recorded provisions for loan losses of 275 million euros, the highest level since the second quarter of last year. The charges will probably amount to less than 1 billion euros this year, despite the “continuously challenging situation” on the shipping market, the bank said in the statement. Commerzbank said it expects a “positive net result” this year.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six