FINANCE
MUFG to buy bank arm
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) plans to buy the project financing business of the Royal Bank of Scotland for an estimated ￡4 billion (US$6.4 billion), a report in Tokyo said yesterday. The leading Japanese banking group plans to take RBS’ loan assets, particularly infrastructure loans in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as some of the bank’s sales forces, the Nikkei newspaper said. MUFG and the British government, which controls 84 percent of the international banking group, are trying to sign an official deal by year-end and complete the transaction in the first half of next year, the newspaper said.
FERTILIZER
Phosagro to bid for Potash
Russian fertilizer company Phosagro is planning to bid for Canada’s Potash Corp, the world’s top fertilizer maker, rivaling a bid by BHP Billiton, business daily Vedomosti reported in Moscow yesterday. Phosagro chairman Vladimir Litvinenko has asked Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to approve a potential deal and request financing from Russian banks, the newspaper said, citing a letter from Litvinenko to Putin. The news comes as Canada insisted on Tuesday it has made no decision yet on BHP’s US$39 billion offer for Potash.
AUTOMOBILES
BMW profits skyrocket
Net profit at the world’s leading luxury car maker, BMW, leapt 11-fold in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period a year earlier, to 874 million euros (US$1.2 billion), the group said in Frankfurt, Germany, yesterday. Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a gain of 914 percent to 791 million euros as German premium car makers benefit from strengthening markets in Brazil, China, India and Russia.
BANKING
Societe Generale back on top
French bank Societe Generale yesterday in Paris posted better-than-expected third-quarter profits of 896 million euros, more than double the same period last year. The figure was much higher than the 716 million euros forecast by Dow Jones Newswires analysts. “It’s the confirmation of the recovery of Societe Generale,” chief executive Frederic Oudea said on the financial news channel CNBC. Societe General lost billions of euros in a rogue trader scandal in 2008.
ALCOHOL
Brewer posts profit decline
Brussels-based Brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev has posted a 7.2 percent decline in net profit for its third quarter because of asset sales last year. AB InBev says net profit fell to US$1.43 billion from US$1.55 billion a year earlier. Sales also fell to US$9.32 billion from US$9.76 billion. The company said on Tuesday its volumes remained mostly stable, as growth in Brazil, China and Russia offset drops in Western Europe and the US.
CREDIT
MasterCard profits rise
MasterCard Inc said in New York on Tuesday that increased use of credit and debit cards, especially overseas, helped lift its third-quarter profit by 15 percent. The payments processor recorded a net income of US$518 million, or US$3.94 per share, for the three months ended Sept. 30. That compares with US$452 million, or US$3.45 per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 5 percent to US$1.43 billion, from US$1.36 billion last year.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
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