RETAIL
Fraspens planning AIM float
Chinese outdoor clothing brand Fraspens was set to announce yesterday its intention to float on London’s Alternate Investment Market (AIM), seeking to raise about ￡4 million (US$6.84 million), the Telegraph reported yesterday. The newspaper said Fraspens’ market value would rise to about ￡40 million on its flotation on AIM. Fraspens shares are expected to start trading next month, the report said. According to Euromonitor International, Fraspens is the third-biggest local outdoor clothing brand in China in terms of revenue. Fraspens could not be contacted for comment outside of normal business hours.
CONGLOMERATES
Philips Q2 profit slid 23%
Dutch electronics giant Philips NV yesterday reported a 23 percent slump in second-quarter net profit to 243 million euros (US$329 million). The Dutch giant said in a statement sales also dropped 5.4 percent to 5.3 billion euros. The group blamed weak performance by its new strategic activities in healthcare equipment for the slump in profits. Last year, Philips announced the sale of its lifestyle entertainment branch, which makes stereos and DVD players, after selling its troubled TV-making arm in 2012.
MACROECONOMICS
US hiring, wages up: NABE
Rising sales helped boost hiring and wages at US businesses in the second quarter, and companies are optimistic that the trends will continue this fall, a new survey by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) showed. Fifty-seven percent of the 85 respondents to the quarterly survey said sales at their companies rose in the April-June period. Respondents also said the outlook for the July-October period is strong, with 59 percent of respondents expecting sales to increase during the third quarter. As sales picked up, so did hiring. Thirty-six percent of companies said they hired more workers during the second quarter, while the employment outlook was steady, with 37 percent of respondents expecting their companies to hire more workers in the July-October period.
ENERGY
Tullow shuts North Sea well
Oil and gas producer Tullow Oil PLC said it had plugged and abandoned a well in the Norwegian North Sea after it failed to find any hydrocarbons. The company said it did not encounter hydrocarbons in the Lupus exploration well, 35km southeast of the Oseberg South field in the North Sea. It was the first well in production license PL 507, Tullow said yesterday. Tullow reported a US$415 million pretax write-off in net exploration in the first half of the year due to dry holes drilled in Mauritania, Ethiopia and Norway over the past six months and various license cancellations.
METALS
Amplats mulls mine sale
Anglo American Platinum Ltd (Amplats), the world’s largest producer of the metal, said it may sell some mines after first-half profit dropped 88 percent because a five-month strike in South Africa disrupted mining. Amplats, as the Johannesburg-based unit of Anglo American PLC is known, is putting four mines and possibly two joint ventures up for sale, it said in a statement yesterday. It will retain the Mogalakwena open-cast operation, the company’s largest, three other mining assets and four stakes in joint ventures. Earnings per share excluding one-time items fell to 0.60 rand (US$0.06) in the six months, from 5.14 rand a year earlier, Amplats 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
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,
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
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