AUTOMAKERS
Ford boss planning to retire
Alan Mulally will likely retire and be replaced as chief executive of Ford Motor by chief operating officer Mark Fields by the end of next year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. Fields could stake over the chief executive position as soon as Thursday next week, according to some media reports. Mulally, a former top executive at Boeing, won strong reviews for his leadership of Ford, helping it avoid a government bailout during the financial crisis. The No. 2 US automaker notched impressive sales growth under Mulally. Earnings rose 26.3 percent last year to US$7.2 billion.
TECHNOLOGY
Philips posts Q1 loss
Royal Philips NV says its first-quarter profits declined as growth slowed in several divisions and consumers spent less on light bulbs. The world’s largest lighting maker yesterday said first-quarter net profit was 138 million euros (US$190 million), down from 161 million euros in the same period a year earlier. Revenues were down 4.8 percent to 5.02 billion euros. It said profit margins worsened in part due to restructuring costs. Chief executive officer Frans van Houten cited “market headwinds in among others, Russia and China,” and said the strong euro also hurt reported figures.
STOCKS
Card firm to list in London
British greeting cards retailer Card Factory plans to list its shares on London’s stock market next month, joining a spate of store groups seeking flotations as the outlook for consumer spending improves. The over 700-store firm, majority owned by private equity group Charterhouse Capital Partners, yesterday said it expected to raise ￡90 million (US$151 million) from an offer of new and existing shares to institutional investors. The firm sold more than 285 million single cards in the year to Jan. 31 and revenue grew 9 percent to ￡326.9 million, while underlying earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 9.2 percent to ￡80.4 million at a margin of 24.6 percent.
LAW
Samsung calls in expert
Samsung Electronics Co says Apple Inc’s patent-infringement claims of US$2.19 billion are 57 times higher than what the Galaxy maker should pay if a jury finds it infringed smartphone technology. Samsung called on a Yale University business school professor on Monday to make its case to a federal jury in San Jose, California, that if it has to pay anything, the amount should be as little as US$0.35 a phone — a stark comparison to Apple’s demand for more than US$40 a phone. The South Korean company also began its offensive attack on Monday, accusing Apple of infringing two of its patents.
MINING
Goldcorp drops hostile bid
Canadian giant Goldcorp on Monday said it would drop its hostile takeover bid for rival Osisko Mining, leaving Yamana Gold and Agnico Eagle Mines Limited to go it alone. Goldcorp had offered C$7.65 per share, but last week Yamana and Agnico Eagle upped the ante in the bidding war with a cash-and-stock offer worth C$8.15 per share, in a deal valued at C$3.9 billion (US$3.54 billion). Osisko’s main asset is a massive gold mine in Canada’s Quebec Province. Over its 16-year lifespan, the Malartic mine is expected to turn out 500,000 to 600,000 ounces of gold per year, according to the company.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
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