SRI LANKA
China buys 70% stake in port
Sri Lanka’s government has signed a long-delayed agreement to sell a 70 percent stake in a US$1.5 billion port to China in a bid to recover from the heavy burden of repayment of loans obtained to build the port. The agreement was signed between the government-run Sri Lanka Ports Authority and the state-run China Merchants Port Holding Co (招商局港口控股) in Colombo yesterday. The Sri Lankan Cabinet approved the agreement on Tuesday after a nearly six-month delay since the framework deal was signed and immediately drew public criticism and protests. The port has suffered heavy losses since it began operations in 2011.
TRADEMARKS
Woman countersues Mars
A Wisconsin woman who won the first round of a trademark lawsuit brought by Mars Inc is suing the confectionery giant. Syovata Edari wants a federal judge to declare that her Madison-made chocolates, called CocoVaa, do not infringe on Mars’ cocoa extract supplements called CocoaVia. The Wisconsin State Journal reports Edari filed the lawsuit on Wednesday. Mars sued Edari in April, saying her product sounds “confusingly similar” to the company’s product, but a judge last month dismissed the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds.
PETROLEUM
Exxon, Chevron profits jump
ExxonMobil Corp and Chevron Corp reported big jumps in second-quarter profits Friday, the latest boost from a recovery in oil prices that still feels shaky to many industry officials. Exxon’s profit for the quarter ending June 30 nearly doubled to US$3.4 billion, while Chevron nabbed US$1.5 billion in earnings, up from a US$1.5 billion loss in the year-ago period. The big improvement in profits came on the heels of a recovery in oil prices in the wake of agreements by OPEC to limit production. Oil prices in the second quarter were about 15 percent above those in the same period last year.
AUTOMAKERS
Audi to axe board members
Four board members at Volkswagen AG subsidiary Audi are set to step down, a German magazine reported on Friday, saying the firm feels under pressure to react to diesel emissions scandals. Volkswagen chief executive Matthias Mueller has told Audi finance director Axel Strotbeck, production chief Hubert Waltl, human resources director Thomas Sigi and sales boss Dietmar Voggenreiter they will soon be asked to stand down, Manager magazine reported, citing anonymous sources. Audi has yet to make a formal decision on the four directors’ departure, and no successors have yet been chosen, the report added.
TELECOMS
Charter rebuffs Sprint merger
Charter Communications Inc is not interested in a merger with Masayoshi Son’s Sprint Corp following a published report that the Japanese billionaire was seeking such a deal, according to a person familiar with the matter. Son, who is Sprint Corp’s chairman, proposed a merger of his struggling wireless company with Charter, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The proposal called for the creation of a new publicly traded company that would combine Sprint and Charter and be controlled by Son’s Softbank Group Corp, the newspaper reported.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”