CHINA
Box office passes US$6bn
The nation’s box office has grown by almost 50 percent so far this year to surpass US$6 billion in ticket sales. The Film Bureau said this year’s box office sales hit 40 billion yuan (US$6.3 billion) as of Thursday night, an increase of 48 percent year on year. China is the world’s No. 2 movie going market after the US. Chinese films accounted for more than 59 percent of box office revenue. Among the top earners were Monster Hunt, a Chinese live-action animation film, and Fast & Furious 7.
BRITAIN
Finance taxes top ￡66.5bn
The government collected ￡66.5 billion (US$99 billion) in taxes from the financial-services industry during this fiscal year, up 1.4 percent from a year earlier and the highest total since 2007, according to the local government body that oversees the main financial district. The industry contributed 11 percent of total government tax receipts, the City of London Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a report published yesterday. Employment taxes generated ￡30 billion, the biggest share. Corporate tax revenue rose 41 percent to ￡7.6 billion, while the bank levy, a post-financial crisis measure based on the size of lenders’ balance sheets, generated ￡2.7 billion, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier.
EUROPEAN UNION
McDonald’s taxes probed
Regulators are to investigate tax deals between McDonald’s and Luxembourg which enabled the US chain to escape paying taxes on European franchise royalties from 2009, a move which could lead to hefty back taxes for the company. Confirming what sources with knowledge of the matter previously told Reuters, the bloc’s antitrust regulators said on Thursday they would launch the probe into arrangements that could be defined as illegal state aid. The EU competition enforcer said McDonald’s had not paid any corporate taxes in Luxembourg or the US on royalties paid by franchisees in Europe and Russia since 2009, as a result of two tax rulings by the Luxembourg authorities.
BEVERAGES
Glass in beer prompts recall
An Australian beer company owned by SABMiller PLC said yesterday it has recalled more than a million bottles of beer after broken glass was found in the product, a setback at the start of traditionally busy holiday season sales. The recall also presented an unwelcome distraction for SABMiller as it seeks to win over regulators around the world for a proposed US$106 billion buyout by rival Anheuser-Busch InBev. Melbourne-based Carlton & United Breweries, which SABMiller bought in 2011, said in a statement it had recalled a batch of its Carlton Dry beer because of an unspecified issue “as a result of packaging.”
COMPUTERS
IBM sets billion-dollar goal
IBM Corp has set an internal revenue goal for SoftLayer, its cloud-infrastructure business, of US$1 billion for next year, a person with knowledge of the matter said. That is an increase of about a quarter from the US$700 million to US$800 million in revenue the unit is expected to take in this year, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the financial information is still private. SoftLayer, which IBM acquired in 2013, had US$335 million in sales the year before the acquisition.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
WORLD DOMINATION: TSMC’s lead over second-placed Samsung has grown as the latter faces increased Chinese competition and the end of clients’ product life cycles Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) retained the No. 1 title in the global pure-play wafer foundry business in the third quarter of this year, seeing its market share growing to 64.9 percent to leave South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the No. 2 supplier, further behind, Taipei-based TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report. TSMC posted US$23.53 billion in sales in the July-September period, up 13.0 percent from a quarter earlier, which boosted its market share to 64.9 percent, up from 62.3 percent in the second quarter, the report issued on Monday last week showed. TSMC benefited from the debut of flagship
A former ASML Holding NV employee is facing a lawsuit in the Netherlands over suspected theft of trade secrets, Dutch public broadcaster NOS said, in the latest breach of the maker of advanced chip-manufacturing equipment. The 43-year-old Russian engineer, who is suspected of stealing documents such as microchip manuals from ASML, is expected to appear at a court in Rotterdam today, NOS reported on Friday. He is accused of multiple violations of the sanctions legislation and has been given a 20-year entry ban by the Dutch government, the report said. The Dutch company makes machines needed to produce high-end chips that power
As South Korea descends into political chaos, its equity market risks falling further behind major tech rival Taiwan, which is basking in the glory of a global artificial intelligence (AI) boom. A near-30 percent surge in Taiwan’s stock benchmark this year, set to be the best since 2009, has already helped spur a historic divergence between Asia’s two tech-dominated markets. The nation’s market capitalization now exceeds South Korea’s by about US$950 billion as the world’s AI frontrunners from Nvidia Corp and Microsoft Corp to OpenAI all increasingly turn to Taiwanese firms for supply. Looking ahead to next year, while both export-oriented economies
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