GERMANY
Unemployment rises
Headline unemployment rose last month, as is usual in the winter, but was unchanged in adjusted terms, official data showed yesterday. The jobless rate, which measures the proportion of people registered as unemployed against the working population as a whole, edged up to 7.4 percent last month from 7.3 percent in January. The data was provided on a raw or unadjusted basis by the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg. In raw terms, the total number of people out of work was up by 25,717 last month from January to stand at 3.11 million, the agency said in a statement.
BANKING
SC bank earnings rise
Standard Chartered (SC) bank notched up a ninth consecutive year of record earnings last year on the back of strong economic growth in Asia, though rising competition for staff pushed up its wages bill. London-based Standard Chartered, which makes more than three quarters of its profit in Asia, said yesterday that strong growth in Hong Kong and Singapore helped offset a 15 percent rise in staff costs and a fall in profits in two of its biggest markets, India and Korea. Total staff costs were US$6.6 billion, up from US$5.8 billion in 2010, but that was swelled by costs for a voluntary retirement plan in Korea, foreign exchange effects and the addition of 1,400 staff during the year. Standard Chartered reported a pretax profit of US$6.8 billion for last year, an increase of 11 percent from US$6.1 billion a year earlier.
TELECOMS
Samsung to splash cash
Samsung Electronics Co, the world’s second-largest handset maker, plans to “significantly” increase investment to bolster its mobile-phone operating system, pitching it as an alternative to Google Inc’s Android. “We want to have a full range of portfolio for Bada [operating system], from high-end to mass--volume segments,” Samsung’s senior vice president of product strategy Park Ju-ha said in an interview in Barcelona on Monday. The South Korean company has so far used Bada on models priced lower than the Galaxy range of devices. “It’s quite meaningful as a niche segment,” said Thomas Kang, a Seoul-based director of wireless smartphone strategies at Strategy Analytics. Samsung sold between 8 million and 9 million Bada phones last year, compared with 2 million a year earlier, Kang said. The company sold 97 million smartphones last year, topping 93 million for Apple’s iPhone, according to an estimate by Strategy Analytics.
HOUSING
UK mortgages increase
UK mortgage approvals rose to the highest level in more than two years in January as first-time buyers rushed to take advantage of a -property-tax exemption before it ends next month. Lenders granted 58,728 loans to buy homes, compared with 55,019 the previous month, the Bank of England said today in London. Economists predicted 54,000, according to the median of 18 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. It was the fourth successive monthly increase and the biggest since June 2009. The figures reflect the March 24 expiration of a two-year stamp-duty holiday for first-time buyers purchasing a home for less than ￡250,000 (US$396,000). Rising unemployment and weak consumer confidence could yet dampen demand in coming months. The ending of the stamp-duty holiday, introduced by the previous Labour government in an effort spur the property market, will add as much as ￡2,500 to the cost of purchasing a home for many new buyers.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
WORLD DOMINATION: TSMC’s lead over second-placed Samsung has grown as the latter faces increased Chinese competition and the end of clients’ product life cycles Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) retained the No. 1 title in the global pure-play wafer foundry business in the third quarter of this year, seeing its market share growing to 64.9 percent to leave South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the No. 2 supplier, further behind, Taipei-based TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report. TSMC posted US$23.53 billion in sales in the July-September period, up 13.0 percent from a quarter earlier, which boosted its market share to 64.9 percent, up from 62.3 percent in the second quarter, the report issued on Monday last week showed. TSMC benefited from the debut of flagship
A former ASML Holding NV employee is facing a lawsuit in the Netherlands over suspected theft of trade secrets, Dutch public broadcaster NOS said, in the latest breach of the maker of advanced chip-manufacturing equipment. The 43-year-old Russian engineer, who is suspected of stealing documents such as microchip manuals from ASML, is expected to appear at a court in Rotterdam today, NOS reported on Friday. He is accused of multiple violations of the sanctions legislation and has been given a 20-year entry ban by the Dutch government, the report said. The Dutch company makes machines needed to produce high-end chips that power
As South Korea descends into political chaos, its equity market risks falling further behind major tech rival Taiwan, which is basking in the glory of a global artificial intelligence (AI) boom. A near-30 percent surge in Taiwan’s stock benchmark this year, set to be the best since 2009, has already helped spur a historic divergence between Asia’s two tech-dominated markets. The nation’s market capitalization now exceeds South Korea’s by about US$950 billion as the world’s AI frontrunners from Nvidia Corp and Microsoft Corp to OpenAI all increasingly turn to Taiwanese firms for supply. Looking ahead to next year, while both export-oriented economies
RSS