AUSTRALIA
Asset sale rejected
The government rejected bids for electricity network Ausgrid from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠) and State Grid Corp of China (國家電網), amid growing opposition to selling infrastructure assets to overseas investors. Treasurer Scott Morrison said it would be contrary to national security to allow the offers to proceed in their current form and said the bidders, which he did not name, have been given a week to respond. “Ausgrid’s footprint includes critical power and communication services provided to businesses and government,” Morrison said yesterday in Brisbane. He said he would make a final decision after seeing any revised submissions.
STEELMAKERS
Thyssenkrupp profit falls
Thyssenkrupp AG, Germany’s largest steelmaker, yesterday reported fiscal third-quarter profit fell 18 percent as record steel exports from China continued to put pressure on prices. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes dropped to 441 million euros (US$493 million) in the three months through June from 539 million a year earlier, the Essen-based company said in a statement. Thyssenkrupp reiterated its fiscal-year profit forecast of at least 1.4 billion euros. “We are now seeing initial improvements in material prices,” chief executive officer Heinrich Hiesinger said. “This will have a favorable impact on our future earnings.”
TELECOMS
China Mobile profit surges
China Mobile Ltd’s (中國移動) first-half profit rose 5.6 percent after the world’s largest phone carrier by users added more 4G subscribers than the populations of the UK and Spain combined. Net income increased to 60.6 billion yuan (US$9.1 billion), compared with 57.3 billion yuan a year earlier, the company said in a statement yesterday. The carrier, which accounts for about 65 percent of the nation’s wireless users, added 116.3 million 4G subscribers in the first six months of the year as more people made the switch from slower services. That market has room to grow as more than half of China’s mobile-phone users use slower 3G or 2G services.
TRAVEL
TUI revenue falls 5.7%
A series of terrorist attacks undermined revenues at German-British travel giant TUI in April and June, the company said in results released yesterday. Revenue in the third quarter of the group’s financial year was down 5.7 percent compared with the same period last year, at 4.6 billion euros. Falling reservations for north Africa and Turkey, the effects of terrorist attacks like the Brussels airport bombings in March and Easter falling outside the second quarter this year were to blame for the slide, the group said in a statement. Although bookings suffered, the group was able to increase operating profits as measured by earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization by 24 percent to 150 million euros.
HOME APPLIANCES
Samsung acquires Dacor
Samsung Electronics Co yesterday said that it had acquired US luxury appliance maker Dacor Inc as part of its push toward a full production line of high-end, Internet-connected homeware. The purchase of the California-based company is the latest in a series of acquisitions by the South Korean electronics giant in recent years — including that of US home automation start-up SmartThings in 2014. A Samsung statement gave no details on the value of the deal to acquire Dacor, whose products include stovetops, ovens, ranges and refrigerators.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
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
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