EUROZONE
Japan buys fewer bonds
Japan bought 10 percent of 3 billion euros (US$4.13 billion) in bonds issued on Monday by the eurozone’s rescue fund, a government official said yesterday, less than its previous investments. Japan’s purchase came to 300 million euros, the official at the Ministry of Finance’s international affairs bureau said. Tokyo had bought 20 percent of previous bond sales issued by the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the rescue fund. “We took into account our euro liquidity [in Japan’s special account of foreign currencies], terms on issuance and the market environment,” the official said of the fall in the Japanese purchasing share. Japan has purchased a total of 2.975 billion euros of EFSF bonds so far this year.
BANKING
Societe Generale profits dip
French bank Societe Generale says its profits dropped 30 percent in the third quarter because it set aside money for losses on Greek bonds as negotiated in a European deal to help Athens dig out of its debt hole. The agreement asks banks that hold Greek debt to take a loss of 50 percent. Societe Generale, like its peer BNP Paribas, factored in a writedown of 60 percent into its third-quarter earnings as they try to reassure investors they can weather the storm. As a result, the bank said yesterday that it booked a net profit of 622 million euros in the July-September period, down 30 percent from last year.
BANKING
Lloyds may miss targets
Lloyds Banking Group PLC, the UK’s largest mortgage provider, said it may miss financial targets set five months ago as it reported a 21 percent decline in pretax profit. Pretax profit fell to ￡644 million (US$1.03 billion) from ￡820 million for the second quarter, the lender said in a statement yesterday. “The attainment of some of our medium-term financial targets, principally with regard to income-related metrics, may be delayed to beyond 2014,” it said in the statement. Because of more challenging economic conditions, “We are reassessing our assumptions,” it said.
AIRLINES
Restructuring boosts JAL
Japan Airlines (JAL) said yesterday its first-half net profit reached US$1.25 billion, thanks to aggressive restructuring efforts after completing its bankruptcy proceedings. JAL posted a net profit of ￥97.4 billion (US$1.25 billion) for the six months to September, with operating profit of ￥106.1 billion on sales totaling ￥599.8 billion. For the financial year to March next year, JAL expects net profit of ￥120 billion and an operating profit of ￥140 billion on sales of ￥1.15 trillion. However, JAL said its business outlook for the third and fourth quarters remained “unclear” because of the Greek and eurozone debt crisis, flooding in Thailand and volatile foreign exchange.
HOSPITALITY
InterContinental’s profits rise
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, owner of the Holiday Inn chain, said it is confident about its outlook after third-quarter earnings rose, led by business at its US and Chinese lodgings. “The economic environment continues to be uncertain, but we remain confident in our future due to our resilient business model, robust balance sheet and powerful brand portfolio,” CEO Richard Solomons said in a statement yesterday. Operating profit in the third-quarter rose 33 percent to US$153 million, while third-quarter sales rose 11 percent to US$467 million, the company said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
NATURAL PARTNERS: Taiwan and Japan have complementary dominant supply chain positions, are geographically and culturally close, and have similar work ethics Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and other related companies would add ￥11.2 trillion (US$78.31 billion) to Japan’s chipmaking hot spot Kumamoto Prefecture over the next decade, a local bank’s analysis said. Kyushu Financial Group, a lender based in Kumamoto’s capital, almost doubled its projection for the economic impact that the chip sector would bring to the region compared to its estimate a year earlier, a presentation on Thursday said. The bank said that 171 firms had made new investments since November 2021, up from 90 in an earlier analysis. TSMC’s Kumamoto location was once a sleepy farming area, but has undergone
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