■ELECTRONICS
Sanyo forecasts loss
Japan’s Sanyo Electric Co yesterday forecast a net loss of ¥30 billion (US$330 million) for the current financial year to March, partly due to the cost of recalling faulty washing machines. Sanyo — which is being bought by its bigger rival Panasonic Corp — had previously estimated that it would just break even with zero net profit, after a loss of ¥93.2 billion the previous year. The group left unchanged its projections for annual revenue of ¥1.66 trillion and an operating loss of ¥25 billion.
■ELECTRONICS
Fujitsu president resigns
Japanese electronics maker Fujitsu Ltd said yesterday that its president Kuniaki Nozoe, 62, had resigned due to illness after about one year in the job. Fujitsu chairman Michiyoshi Mazuka, 65, will take on the additional role while Nozoe will become an adviser to the group, it said in a statement. The company lost more than US$1 billion in the year to March as it overhauled its operations in response to the global economic crisis.
■FINANCE
HSBC chief heads to London
HSBC on Friday said that its chief executive Michael Geoghegan will move to Hong Kong from London so that he is closer to the banking group’s “largest and most important region” of operation. HSBC, founded in Hong Kong and Shanghai in 1865, said it would remain headquartered in London. “There is absolutely no question of HSBC pulling away from London. We will operate from two equally strategically important centers for the company,” chairman Stephen Green said in a statement.
■CONSUMER PRODUCTS
Unilever to buy Sara Lee unit
Consumer products maker Unilever NV says it has agreed to buy the personal care products businesses of Sara Lee Corp for 1.28 billion euros (US$1.88 billion). Unilever makes Dove soaps and Axe deodorants, while the Sara Lee businesses to be acquired are known for the Sanex, Radox and Duschdas brands, Unilever said. The Anglo-Dutch company says the businesses are complementary and have room to grow in developing markets. Unilever said in a statement yesterday the deal must be approved by regulators.
■SINGAPORE
Industrial output rises
Singapore’s industrial output rose 12.3 percent year-on-year last month, its second straight monthly expansion amid signs the city-state was recovering from a recession, government data showed yesterday. The biomedical industry was the main driver for the surge in industrial output with an expansion of 97.8 percent from a year ago, the Economic Development Board (EDB) said. The strong showing from the biomedical sector cushioned declines in other industries, including electronics, which dropped 6.4 percent year-on-year last month, it said.
■INTERNET
Google sorry for outage
Google apologized on Thursday for a Gmail outage which left some users of the free Web-based email service cut off for the second time in a month. The Internet giant announced at 10:29am that an unspecified problem was preventing a “small subset of users” from accessing their Gmail accounts. About an hour later, the Internet giant said service had been restored for some users and at 12:58pm it said the problem had been resolved. The disruption came just more than three weeks after an outage that left millions of users without Gmail for more than an hour and a half.
Taiwan aims to open 18 representative offices and seven Taiwan Tourism Information Centers worldwide by next year to attract international visitors, the Tourism Administration said on Saturday. The agency has so far opened three representative offices abroad this year and would open two more before the end of the year, it said. It has also already opened information centers in Jakarta, Mumbai and Paris, and is to open one in Vancouver next month and in Manila in December, it said. Next year, it would also open offices in Amsterdam, Dubai and Sydney, it added. While the Cabinet did not mention international tourists in its
EYES AT SEA: Many marine enthusiasts have expressed interest in volunteering for coastal patrols, which would help identify stowaways and illegal fishing, the CGA said Six thousand coastal patrol volunteers are to be recruited for 159 inspection offices to enhance the nation’s response to “gray zone” conflicts, Coast Guard Administration (CGA) sources said yesterday. Volunteer teams would be established to increase the resilience of coastal defense systems in the wake of two unlawful entries attempted by Chinese over the past three months, Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said. A former Chinese navy captain drove a motorboat into the Tamsui River (淡水河) in Taipei on the eve of the Dragon Boat Festival in June, while another Chinese man sailed in a rubber boat into the Houkeng
NEXT LEVEL: The defense ministry confirmed that a video released last month featured personnel piloting new FPV drone systems being developed by the Armaments Bureau Taipei and Washington are pushing for their drone companies to work together to establish a China-free supply chain, the Financial Times reported on Friday. A delegation of high-level executives and US government officials were yesterday to arrive in Taipei to discuss with their Taiwanese counterparts collaboration on drone technology procurement and development, the report said. The executives represent 26 US manufacturers of drone and counter-drone systems, while the officials are from the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit, along with Dev Shenoy, principal director for microelectronics in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense
‘ANONYMOUS 64’: A national security official said that it is an attempt by China to increase domestic anti-Taiwanese sentiment and inflame cross-strait tensions The Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM) yesterday denied accusations by China that it had undermined regional security by carrying out cyberattacks against targets in China, adding instead that Beijing was responsible for raising tensions and undermining regional peace. The Chinese Ministry of State Security on WeChat accused a hacker group called “Anonymous 64” of targeting China, Hong Kong and Macau starting earlier this year through frequent cyberattacks. The group carried out cyberattacks to seize control of Web sites, outdoor electronic billboards and video-on-demand platforms in China, Hong Kong and Macau, it said, adding the hackers’