INTERNET
Yahoo boardroom row erupts
A major Yahoo Inc shareholder believes the slumping Internet company would be better off without Jerry Yang (楊致遠) on its board as it mulls a possible sale. In a letter on Friday to Yahoo’s board, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb said Yang has too many conflicts of interest to keep the board seat he has held since starting the company more than 16 years ago. Loeb, who owns a 5.2 percent stake in Yahoo through a fund called Third Point LLC, based his conclusion on published reports that Yang has been talking to several buyout firms about joining forces to buy a controlling stake in the company. The letter lists the Texas Pacific Group, Providence Equity Partners, Silver Lake, KKR & Co and the Blackstone Group as the firms talking to Yang. In a statement, Yahoo reiterated that its board has been exploring various ways to boost the company’s stock price and brushed off the reports cited in Loeb’s letter as “rumor and speculation.”
GERMANY
Tax revenues forecast to rise
The tax take this year is expected to come in 16.2 billion euros (US$22.3 billion) higher than previously forecast, which should help the country balance its budget by 2016 at the latest, the government said on Friday. The new tax projection forecasts a total tax take this year of 571.2 billion euros minutes — up from the 555 billion euros estimated in May. This year’s projection was already revised upward in May and the new estimate provides the government further leeway to cut this year’s budget deficit down from an expected 48 billion euros to “less than half” of that, Deputy Finance Minister Steffen Kampeter said. That would bring the deficit down to about 1 percent of GDP — well below the 3 percent deficit ceiling mandated by the eurozone. As growth in the economy — Europe’s biggest — shows signs of slowing, the Finance Ministry expects next year’s tax take to be only slightly higher than projected in May, up by 7.4 billion euros to 584.6 billion euros.
IRELAND
New austerity cuts unveiled
Dublin announced a deepening austerity drive on Friday, committing itself to cut 3.8 billion euros from next year’s deficit and to keep increasing taxes and slashing spending through 2015 to meet the terms of its international bailout. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the rising level of cuts and tax increases outlined in his 2012-to-2015 fiscal plan are needed for Ireland to claw its 2015 deficit back within 3 percent of GDP, the key target in last year’s bailout deal. Such cuts, Noonan said, were forecast to reduce Ireland’s deficit for next year to 8.6 percent of GDP, 7.5 perecent in 2013, 5.1 percent in 2014 and 2.9 percent in 2015.
BANKING
New Delhi to aid State Bank
India’s government will invest 40 billion rupees (US$814 million) of capital in State Bank of India by the end of March, bank chairman Pratip Chaudhuri said. The country’s biggest bank will need about 400 billion rupees in fresh capital during the next three years, Chaudhuri told reporters in Chennai yesterday. State Bank also aims to raise the capital from its shareholders and own funds, he said. Mumbai-based State Bank has been in talks with the government to raise capital since at least February last year. Moody’s Investors Service cut State Bank’s financial strength rating on Oct. 4, citing deteriorating asset quality.
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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