Banking
Barclays income slows
Barclays said key investment banking income remained weak in the past four months, countering a sharp improvement in bad debts that lifted the British bank’s underlying third-quarter profit. Barclays said yesterday it made an underlying July-September pretax profit of ￡1.27 billion (US$2.05 billion). Including a charge on its own credit, its pretax profit was ￡327 million in the quarter, down more than ￡1 billion. However, income at Barclays Capital fell to ￡2.83 billion in the third quarter, down 14 percent from the previous quarter, to extend a first-half slowdown as capital markets activity weakened.
Electronics
Panasonic eyes Brazil, India
Panasonic Corp plans to spend about ￥8.5 billion (US$105 million) to build household appliance factories in Brazil and India by 2012. The company will invest about ￥6 billion in Brazil and ￥2.5 billion in India to build refrigerator and washing machine plants, Yuka Sakamoto, an Osaka-based spokeswoman for Panasonic, said yesterday by telephone, confirming a Nikkei newspaper report. The Brazil factory will begin operations in 2012, with annual production capacity of 500,000 refrigerators and 200,000 washing machines. The Indian plant will begin production of washing machines from August of the same year, aiming for an annual production capacity of 500,000 units.
Japan
Account surplus widens
Japan’s current account surplus widened 24.3 percent in September from a year ago, data showed yesterday, despite fears for the strength of an export-led recovery. The surplus in the current account — the broadest measure of trade with the rest of the world — rose to ￥1.96 trillion (US$24.16 billion), the first gain in two months, the finance ministry said. The first half saw Japan’s biggest six-monthly export gain on record as the sector rebounded from the depths of the global economic crisis of 2008 and last year, which severely damaged the Japanese economy. Japanese exports gained 26.6 percent to ￥32.33 trillion between April and September marking the biggest increase since the ministry started taking comparable data in 1986.
ASEAN
Major countries rebound
The six major ASEAN countries have rebounded from the global economic crisis, with average expected growth of 7.3 percent this year, and 6 percent over the next five years, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said yesterday. Moreover, the OECD said in its 2010 Southeast Asian Economic Outlook that this growth would likely be more balanced. Vietnam is expected to post the highest average growth rate in the 2011-2015 period at 7.1 percent, followed by Indonesia with 6.6 percent, Malaysia 5.5 percent, Thailand 5.2 percent, Singapore 4.7 percent and the Philippines 4.6 percent.
Electronics
E-book sales set to grow
Sales of electronic books are expected to hit nearly US$1 billion in the US this year and to triple by 2015, according to a new report by Forrester Research Inc. The market research firm said US spending on e-books was expected to total US$966 million this year, up from US$301 million last year and to reach US$2.81 billion in 2015. Forrester said the number of e-book readers with dedicated devices in the US was expected to grow from 3.7 million at the end of last year to 10.3 million at the end of this year to 29.4 million in 2015.
POWERING UP: PSUs for AI servers made up about 50% of Delta’s total server PSU revenue during the first three quarters of last year, the company said Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) reported record-high revenue of NT$161.61 billion (US$5.11 billion) for last quarter and said it remains positive about this quarter. Last quarter’s figure was up 7.6 percent from the previous quarter and 41.51 percent higher than a year earlier, and largely in line with Yuanta Securities Investment Consulting Co’s (元大投顧) forecast of NT$160 billion. Delta’s annual revenue last year rose 31.76 percent year-on-year to NT$554.89 billion, also a record high for the company. Its strong performance reflected continued demand for high-performance power solutions and advanced liquid-cooling products used in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers,
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
‘BASICALLY A BAN’: Sources said the wording governing H200 imports from officials was severe, but added that the regulations might change if the situation evolves Chinese customs authorities told customs agents this week that Nvidia Corp’s H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips are not permitted to enter China, three people briefed on the matter said. Chinese government officials also summoned domestic technology companies to meetings on Tuesday, at which they were explicitly instructed not to purchase the chips unless necessary, two of the people and a third source said. “The wording from the officials is so severe that it is basically a ban for now, though this might change in the future should things evolve,” one of the people said. The H200, Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, is one
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
RSS