Saudi arabia
Pipeline leak kills contractor
A contractor was killed and three other workers were injured in a pipeline leak, state-owned oil giant Aramco said yesterday. Aramco tweeted that the leak occurred at the Abqaiq facility, 60km southwest of the company’s main Dhahran compound. The two contractors have since been discharged from hospital. The country is looking to diversify its oil-dependent economy and plans to list Aramco on the stock market in 2018. The kingdom has announced budget cutbacks after its 2015 deficit snowballed to US$97 billion.
AUSTRALIA
Tax cut to include big banks
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has rejected calls from some lawmakers to exclude the nation’s four big banks from a planned company tax cut. “A company tax rate has got to really go across all corporations,” Turnbull said on Saturday in Queenstown, New Zealand. “Distinguishing between one sector and another is not a practical measure. I’m not aware of that ever being done in any other jurisdiction.” Some backbench lawmakers from the ruling Liberal-National coalition have called for big banks to be cut out of the government’s US$48.7 billion plan to reduce the company tax rate to 25 percent from 30 percent, according to the Australian newspaper.
AUSTRALIA
Accenture to hire in US
Technology consulting and services company Accenture Ltd on Friday announced plans to boost its US workforce by 30 percent in the coming three years. The company said it will create “15,000 highly skilled new jobs” in the US, increasing the size of its overall workforce in the country to more than 65,000 by the end of 2020. The hiring would come with the creation of 10 new “innovation hubs” and an investment of US$1.4 billion in training employees “leading-edge capabilities” for doing their jobs. “Today marks a key moment for Accenture to help our clients play an even bigger part in the nation’s growth and innovation agenda,” Accenture chief executive officer Julie Sweet said.
BANKING
BofA head to get US$20m
Bank of America Corp (BofA) chief executive officer Brian Moynihan is getting a big pay raise this year. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank on Friday said that its board of directors awarded Moynihan a pay package of US$20 million for last year, up from his package of US$16 million for his work in 2015. Most of that pay package is to come in the form of stock, about US$18.5 million, compared with Moynihan’s US$1.5 million base salary. The board said the pay was reflective of the big jump in profits the bank experienced last year. The bank last year earned US$17.9 billion in full-year profits, up 13 percent from 2015.
ENTERTAINMENT
Paramount eyes new leader
Viacom Inc is in discussions with Paramount Pictures chief Brad Grey about a change in leadership at the studio after a string of box office duds, according to a person familiar with the talks. Changes could be announced next week, the person said. Grey, 59, has been chairman and chief executive officer of Paramount since 2005, the longest tenure of any current studio head. The film business initially thrived under his direction, but its performance dropped precipitously more recently. The studio lost US$445 million on sales of US$2.66 billion last year.
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