TELECOMS
Talk Talk plays down attack
British telecoms company Talk Talk says a cyberattack feared to have put 4 million customers’ details at risk is not as bad as initially thought. Chief executive Dido Harding on Saturday said that attackers hacked the company’s Web site, but not its core systems, and “none of our customers’ credit card information has been exposed.” She said some bank account details had been accessed, but not enough for thieves to steal money from customers’ accounts. It is the third known cyberattack this year on Talk Talk, which provides mobile phone, Internet and pay-TV services.
MANUFACTURING
Lexmark explores options
Lexmark International Inc hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc to explore strategic alternatives after the computer-printer maker’s stock had dropped 20 percent for the year. No timetable has been set and there is no assurance that the move will result in a transaction, the Lexington, Kentucky-based company said on Friday. “While the board is encouraged by the company’s future prospects, the board does not believe Lexmark’s current share price fully reflects the intrinsic value created by the company,” company lead director Jean-Paul Montupet said in a statement. The company in July reported a 1.4 percent drop in second-quarter revenue to US$879.3 million, missing analysts’ estimates of US$901 million.
START-UPS
Uber plans to raise capital
Uber Technologies Inc, the ride-hailing service, is planning to raise close to US$1 billion in new venture capital from investors, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Investors are looking at a valuation of US$60 billion to US$70 billion. Such a fundraising round would make Uber the world’s most valuable private start-up by far. A round just this summer valued the company at more than US$50 billion, a bit more than Facebook’s last big private capital raise in 2011. The latest round of financing will be the eighth that the company has sought over the past five years.
AVIATION
American’s income up 80%
A big merger and cheaper jet fuel are doing wonders for American Airlines. The world’s biggest airline on Friday reported that net income jumped 80 percent to US$1.69 billion in the third quarter thanks to a huge drop in fuel spending. The company said that excluding special items related to its merger and other items such as technology help, adjusted profit was US$1.9 billion — the highest in any quarter in American’s history. The company does not disclose average fares, but yield, or the amount that passengers pay for each 1.6km they fly, fell 9.2 percent. That contributed to a 3.9 percent decline in third-quarter revenue.
BANKING
UNB misses Q3 estimates
Union National Bank (UNB) PJSC, the United Arab Emirates lender in which the governments of Abu Dhabi and Dubai both own stakes, reported third-quarter profit that missed analyst estimates as impairment charges rose and fee and trading income declined. Net income fell 12 percent to 480.6 million dirhams (US$131 million), the Abu Dhabi-based bank said in a statement to the stock exchange yesterday. Impairment charges jumped 57 percent to 199.8 million dirhams. Fee and commission income dropped 16 percent and the lender had a loss from currency and derivatives trading in the quarter versus a profit a year ago.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Until US President Donald Trump’s return a year ago, when the EU talked about cutting economic dependency on foreign powers — it was understood to mean China, but now Brussels has US tech in its sights. As Trump ramps up his threats — from strong-arming Europe on trade to pushing to seize Greenland — concern has grown that the unpredictable leader could, should he so wish, plunge the bloc into digital darkness. Since Trump’s Greenland climbdown, top officials have stepped up warnings that the EU is dangerously exposed to geopolitical shocks and must work toward strategic independence — in defense, energy and
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
RSS