TECHNOLOGY
Fine to cut Alphabet profits
Alphabet Inc late on Friday said that the European Commission’s antitrust fine would reduce second-quarter profits by about US$2.74 billion. The company plans to report the fine in a separate operating expense line on its income statement. It is not tax deductible, so the charge would reduce Alphabet’s net income and earnings per share by the full US$2.74 billion, it said in a statement. Analysts expect Alphabet, the owner of Google, to report second-quarter net income of US$5.78 billion. Google has 90 days to deliver a solution that appeases EU regulators or face further fines.
TECHNOLOGY
Microsoft to focus on cloud
Microsoft Corp is planning a global sales reorganization to better focus on selling cloud software, people familiar with the matter said. The restructuring is scheduled to be announced as soon as next week and is to affect the firm’s Worldwide Commercial Business under Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois’ global sales and marketing group, the people said. Job cuts are likely to result from the changes, the people said. The shifts are to be some of the most significant in the sales force in years and is to also affect local marketing efforts in various nations, people said. Microsoft declined to comment.
FINANCE
Berkshire buys BofA shares
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc is buying 700 million shares in Bank of America Corp (BofA), making Buffett the largest shareholder in two of the US’ largest banks. Berkshire on Friday said that it is to convert warrants purchased in Bank of America back in 2011, when the bank was struggling following the financial crisis, into common shares in the bank. Berkshire is to surpass mutual fund giant Vanguard Group Inc as the largest shareholder in the bank. Buffett is also the largest shareholder in Wells Fargo & Co.
SAUDI ARABIA
Economy shrank by 0.5%
The nation’s economy shrank by 0.5 percent in the first quarter, illustrating the scale of the challenge facing its new heir as he overhauls an economy still reliant on a struggling oil industry. GDP was 643 billion riyals (US$171.5 billion), compared with 646.4 billion riyals in the same quarter last year, the General Authority for Statistics said on Friday in a report on its Web site, using preliminary data based on 2010 constant prices. The IMF expects economic growth to slow to 0.4 percent this year, the least since 2009. Saudi authorities have said they expect overall growth to exceed 1 percent this year.
ENTERTAINMENT
Bride auction to change
Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride is losing a scene where a bound and tearful woman is on the auction block for pirates to buy as a wife. A banner that says: “Auction, take a wench for a bride,” is to be changed to: “Auction, Surrender yer loot,” and the woman is to become a pirate. Disneyland spokeswoman Suzi Brown on Friday said the changes would be made at the Paris park this month and at the Anaheim, California, and Florida parks next year. The change is the most recent of several updates to the ride, including one where a scene was altered to have pirates chasing a woman’s food instead of the woman.
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
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