ENTERTAINMENT
Music business growth flat
The US retail music business was essentially flat last year, as growth in streaming revenue helped offset further decline in sales of CDs, a report from the Recording Industry Association of America said on Wednesday. Overall, retail revenue declined by about 0.5 percent to US$6.97 billion. Meanwhile, wholesale revenue for the recorded music industry grew by 2 percent to US$4.86 billion, the association said. Of the revenue mix, permanent downloads made up 37 percent of the total market, down from 40 percent in 2013. Streaming revenue was 27 percent of the total, up from 21 percent a year earlier, while physical shipment revenue was 32 percent of the total, down from 35 percent, it said.
FOOD & BEVERAGE
Charoen plans expansion
Charoen Pokphand Foods PCL, Thailand’s largest meat and animal feed producer, plans to spend 20 billion baht to 25 billion baht (US$611 million to US$763 million) this year, mostly on the expansion of its international operations and overseas acquisitions. Charoen Pokphand will keep its annual investment budget at that level over the next five years, aiming to meet a sales growth target of 10 percent a year, chief executive Adirek Sripratak said yesterday. The company also plans to spin off the non-core assets of its Hong Kong-listed CP Pokphand, and put the new entity on the Hong Kong stock exchange sometime in the middle of the year, Adirek said.
OIL
ConocoPhillips to cut jobs
American oil firm ConocoPhillips Co on Wednesday announced the slashing of about 200 jobs in Canada, or 7 percent of its staff in that country, in response to plunging oil prices. This follows hundreds of job cuts announced recently by others with mines in the Alberta oil sands, including China National Offshore Oil Corp (中國海洋石油) subsidiary Nexen Inc, Suncor Energy Inc and Royal Dutch Shell PLC in response to falling oil prices. According to government statistics, 20,000 jobs have been shed in Canada’s oil sands since September last year.
FASHION
Jimmy Choo earnings up
Luxury shoemaker Jimmy Choo reported a 7.2 percent rise in annual earnings and said it would continue to grow by expanding its store portfolio in China. Adjusted core earnings reached ￡50.2 million (US$75 million) last year, compared with ￡46.9 million in 2013. Underlying sales rose 5.7 percent at its retail arm last year. That growth would come from opening 10 to 15 new directly owned shops this year, with a focus on China, as the company continues to perform well in Asia. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Jimmy Choo said that it was being impacted by fewer Russian travelers.
TRADE
US to challenge Indonesia
US trade and agriculture officials on Wednesday announced that the US is bringing a case against Indonesia at the WTO in Geneva. The US has long complained about Indonesian trade policies, including a ban on chicken and other meats, and licensing requirements that limit US farm exports. Without those barriers, Indonesia — whose population of 254 million is the world’s fourth-largest — would be a more lucrative market for US farmers, US officials said. New Zealand is joining the US in the case.
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
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
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,
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