Thu, Jan 30, 2014 page15

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  SOUTH KOREA

  Industrial output resurging

  The nation’s industrial output last month rose at its fastest pace in more than four years, boosted by robust production in memorychips and cars, official data showed yesterday. Production in the mining, manufacturing, gas and electricity industries rose 3.4 percent from the previous month and 2.6 percent from December 2012, according to the state-run Statistics Korea. Last month’s figure is the fastest month-on-month growth since June 2009. Meanwhile, the country’s current account surplus reached a record US$70.7 billion last year, helped by robust exports, the official figures showed. The nation’s economy grew 2.8 percent last year, up from 2 percent in 2012, and the central bank has forecast growth of 3.8 percent for this year.

  UNITED STATES

  Consumers more confident

  Consumer confidence has risen to its highest point since August last year, on the strength of a brighter view of the job market and business conditions. The Conference Board, a business research group, on Tuesday said its consumer confidence index rose to 80.7 this month from last month’s reading of 77.5 in the measure’s second consecutive strong gain. Last year, the confidence gauge averaged 73.3, the highest level since 2007, and above the 45.2 average in 2009 when the national economy was in recession for half of the year. However, this month’s figure is still below the reading of 90 that economists view as consistent with a healthy economy.

  AUTOMAKERS

  Ford Q4 profits beat targets

  US auto giant Ford Motor Co on Tuesday reported higher quarterly profits that beat expectations, but warned of a tougher pricing environment in North America and rising financial risk in South America. Ford, the second-biggest US automaker, notched a 90 percent rise in fourth-quarter earnings last year thanks largely to a number of tax gains, while its revenue rose 3.6 percent annually. Its net income for last year was US$7.2 billion on revenue of US$146.9 billion, up 26.3 percent from the company’s 2012 profit of US$5.7 billion on revenue of US$133.6 billion.

  STOCKS

  HK Electric has weak debut

  The stock market debut of a utilty trust owned by Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), went off with a whimper, not a bang, in early trade yesterday, despite being Hong Kong’s biggest initial public offering of the year. Shares in HK Electric Investments (港燈電力投資) — carved out from Li’s Hong Kong-listed utilities firm Power Assets (電能實業) — dropped 4.04 percent to a low of HK$5.23 (US$0.67) in morning trade, after raising US$3.11 billion earlier this month ahead of debut. The firm sold 4.43 billion units at the low end of its HK$5.45 to HK$6.30 indicative price range. The benchmark Hang Seng Index rose 0.94 percent in morning trade.

  INVESTMENT

  Icahn boosts Apple holdings

  Activist investor Carl Icahn on Tuesday fired off word that he has beefed up his Apple Inc stock holdings by half-a-billion US dollars as share prices dipped. “Just bought $500 mln more $AAPL shares,” Icahn said in a message on Twitter. “My buying seems to be going neck-and-neck with Apple’s buyback program, but hope they win that race.” Icahn last week revealed that he had invested about US$3 billion in Apple. He made another purchase later in the week, so Tuesday’s purchase would give him about US$4.1 billion worth of shares, or about 0.9 percent of the company’s market value.
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