FINANCE
Buffett ends cancer therapy
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has completed radiation treatment for prostate cancer, according to a newspaper owned by the larger-than-life financier. “It’s a great day for me. Today I had my 44th and last day of radiation,” the tycoon told executives of newspapers he recently acquired on Friday, according to a report on the Web site of the Omaha World-Herald. Buffett, the mastermind and chief executive of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, announced in April that he had an early stage of the cancer and would undergo treatment. “I’ll be feeling the side effects for a few weeks yet, but I am so glad to say that’s over,” the Omaha World-Herald quoted the 82-year-old as saying.
SOUTH KOREA
Group cuts growth forecast
A state-run think-tank yesterday cut its forecast for the country’s growth this year to 2.5 percent, citing the eurozone debt crisis. The Korea Development Institute’s latest outlook is well below the government’s revised growth forecast in June of 3.3 percent, and over a percentage point below a May prediction of 3.6 percent. It said Asia’s fourth-largest economy is expected to expand 3.4 percent next year, gradually recovering from the slowdown caused by slow exports and sluggish domestic demand.
RETAIL
Major drop in store sales
Sales at South Korea’s top department stores fell for a third consecutive month last month, data showed yesterday, underlining the impact of an economic slowdown on domestic consumer demand. The sales at stores run by the country’s three major operators — Lotte, Shinsegae and Hyundai — were down 6.9 percent last month compared with the same month last year, according to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. It followed a 1.3 percent drop in July and marked the third monthly sales decline in a row on a year-on-year basis. Sales at discount stores declined 3.3 percent last month from a year earlier, marking the fifth straight monthly fall.
RUSSIA
Bank makes big investment
The country’s central bank yesterday announced plans to go ahead with the long-delayed auction of a 7.58-percent stake in main lender Sberbank following a recent improvement in global market sentiment. The Bank of Russia said the sell-off would leave the state holding a 50 percent stake plus one voting share in the country’s main financial institution. A bank statement said the stake would be auctioned off in both dollars as global depository shares on the London Stock Exchange and rubles as ordinary shares appearing on Moscow’s MICEX exchange. The bidding process was expected to close tomorrow.
AUTOMAKERS
Firm OKs deal with unions
The Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) union is to focus on reaching an agreement with Ford as negotiations continue with all of Detroit’s Big Three automakers as a strike deadline was looming yesterday, the head of the union said. CAW President Ken Lewenza said on Sunday that Ford has shown a willingness to reach an agreement. He said talks with Chrysler and General Motors are to continue, but high level talks are to be focused on Ford. A strike at all three automakers would affect about 20,000 workers and about 16 percent of North American auto production. The CAW represents about 4,500 workers at Ford, 8,000 workers at GM and another 8,000 at Chrysler.
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
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
China has threatened severe economic retaliation against Japan if Tokyo further restricts sales and servicing of chipmaking equipment to Chinese firms, complicating US-led efforts to cut the world’s second-largest economy off from advanced technology. Senior Chinese officials have repeatedly outlined that position in recent meetings with their Japanese counterparts, people familiar with the matter said. Toyota Motor Corp privately told officials in Tokyo that one specific fear in Japan is that Beijing could react to new semiconductor controls by cutting the country’s access to critical minerals essential for automotive production, the people said, declining to be named discussing private affairs. Toyota is among
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