ENERGY
OPEC might ease oil curbs
OPEC and its allies, including Russia, might next year ease the crude output curbs that have helped prices recover from the worst crash in a generation, Saudi Arabian Minister of Energy and Industry Khalid al-Falih said. With the market moving toward equilibrium and bloated inventories shrinking, the next step for global producers will be to phase out the reductions, al-Falih said on Saturday, adding that the nations taking part in the supply curbs are studying what a crude rebalancing would entail.
AUTOMAKERS
VW profit up 55.5 percent
Volkswagen AG (VW) has said its net profit last year increased by more than half, while revenue climbed more than 6 percent. The German automaker on Friday said it earned 4.35 billion euros (US$5.35 billion) last year, a 55.5 percent increase over the previous year’s 2.8 billion euros. Rvenue grew 6.2 percent year-on-year to 230.7 billion euros. The company on Friday said that it “expects to moderately exceed its latest record delivery figures” this year, while revenue might rise as much as 5 percent.
TECHNOLOGY
Court tosses Apple complaint
A French court on Friday threw out a complaint by Apple Inc demanding a ban on protests at its stores by the tax campaign group Attac. Attac had staged a sit-in at Apple’s flagship Paris store on Dec. 2 last year, blocking access for several hours in protest at what they claimed was “massive tax evasion” by the US tech giant. Apple sought a court order barring the activists from further protests inside its stores, but a Paris court dismissed the firm’s claim as long as these were peaceful and did not block access to the store.
BANKING
InvestaBank rethinks deal
InvestaBank, the Mexican lender that in 2016 agreed to buy Deutsche Bank AG’s Mexico units, is considering steps to renegotiate the US$175 million purchase, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The Mexico-based firm might seek to lower the price after regulatory changes wiped out most of the revenue the German lender generated through its monopoly on custodial services in the corner of the Mexican stock market where foreign securities trade, the people said.
JAPAN
Firms sell super-long bonds
Companies are selling super-long bonds amid expectations that Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s reappointment will prolong easy monetary policy, even as increases in overseas yields put pressure on market rates to rise. Less than a week after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated Kuroda for another term, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings Corp on Wednesday sold what was its first 20-year debt in about a year and a half. Next week, trading firm Toyota Tsusho Corp plans to price 20-year notes and Sumitomo Forestry Co is to sell its first 15-year securities ever, people said.
SMELTERS
Century waiting for US tariffs
The main US producer of high-purity aluminum used in military aircraft is poised to begin restarting idled production lines at its smelter in eastern Kentucky and recall about 350 workers if US President Donald Trump imposes aluminum import curbs. Century Aluminum Co chief executive Michael Bless said the US Department of Commerce’s recommendations for aluminum tariffs or quotas would allow aluminum producers to restore all of “what’s left” of their idled capacity to production.
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