■CHINA
Regulator to track loans
China’s banking regulator said it will ensure loans enter the “real economy” and restrict financing to sectors that are energy-intensive, bad for the environment and facing overcapacity. The regulator will watch changes in the real estate market and enforce related loan policies, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a statement on its Web site after its annual meeting. It will support areas such as agriculture and small companies, and reinforce risk controls, the regulator said.
■LOGISTICS
Germany tops survey
Germany emerged top and Singapore second on Friday in a new World Bank logistics survey that measures how efficiently countries trade their goods around the world. Sweden was adjudged the next most trade-friendly nation in the study hailed by the Washington-based institution as “the most comprehensive world survey of international freight forwarders and express carriers.” High-income economies dominated the top logistics rankings, with most of them occupying important places in global and regional supply chains, the 155-nation “Logistics Performance Indicators” study showed. By contrast, the 10 worst-performing countries were all from the low and lower income groups.
■INTERNET
Bing search share grows
Microsoft’s new Internet search engine Bing posted a modest gain in its share of the US search market last month while partner Yahoo saw its share dip slightly, online tracking firm comScore said. Google remained the overwhelming leader of the lucrative US search and advertising market last month, increasing its share to 65.7 percent from 65.6 percent in November, comScore figures released on Friday showed. Yahoo saw its share of the search market fall to 17.3 percent last month from 17.5 percent the previous month, comScore said, while Bing’s share rose to 10.7 percent from 10.3 percent.
■INTERNET
AmEx buys payment firm
American Express (AmEx) said on Friday it had completed its acquisition of Revolution Money, a Web payments firm started in 2005 by Internet firm AOL founder Steve Case. With the US$300 million acquisition, AmEx is taking aim at the growing market for online and alternative payments, in a challenge to recognized leader PayPal, analysts said. PayPal, a unit of eBay, has been able to dominate in this area but others such as Google Checkout have struggled, analysts say.
■FOOD
Pershing pushes for bid
Pershing Square Capital Management LP, a New York hedge fund run by activist investor William Ackman, has amassed a 2 percent stake in Kraft Foods Inc and has encouraged the food giant to pursue an acquisition of Cadbury Plc. The purchases, confirmed by Kraft and Ackman on Friday, comes as Kraft nears a deadline to make its final bid for Cadbury. The stake of nearly 33 million shares is now Pershing’s largest single investment, Ackman said.
■MEDIA
Affiliated plans bankruptcy
Affiliated Media Inc, the holding company for MediaNews Group Inc newspapers including the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News, said on Friday that it plans to become the latest owner of US newspapers to file for bankruptcy. The company said it would file a “prepackaged” plan already approved by lenders, which should allow it to emerge from bankruptcy more quickly.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
Sales RecORD: Hon Hai’s consolidated sales rose by about 20 percent last quarter, while Largan, another Apple supplier, saw quarterly sales increase by 17 percent IPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) on Saturday reported its highest-ever quarterly sales for the third quarter on the back of solid global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) globally, said it posted NT$1.85 trillion (US$57.93 billion) in consolidated sales in the July-to-September quarter, up 19.46 percent from the previous quarter and up 20.15 percent from a year earlier. The figure beat the previous third-quarter high of NT$1.74 trillion recorded in 2022, company data showed. Due to rising demand for AI, Hon Hai said its cloud and networking division enjoyed strong sales
RSS