BANKING
Goldman’s Schwartz retiring
Goldman Sachs is losing an architect of its Asia-Pacific division at the same time it confronts slowing activity in the region and a probe over its dealings in Malaysia. Mark Schwartz, 62, has decided to retire from his post as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific, a memo on Monday from chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and president Gary Cohn said. Beijing-based Schwartz, a 27-year Goldman veteran, is to leave his post at the end of the year. He will serve as a senior director at Goldman following his departure from China. Schwartz played an “instrumental role” in building Goldman’s business in Asia, as chairman of the Asia-Pacific unit in Tokyo in the late 1990s and reprising the role again in 2012 from Beijing, the memo said.
AIRLINES
Kenya Air suspends strike
Kenya Airways jumped 6.5 percent in early trading yesterday, after pilots suspended a planned strike following talks between the union, airline and government. The pilots’ union KALPA had called for an indefinite strike to demand management changes at the loss-making airline, which is partly owned by the government and Air France-KLM. The union, airline executives and government held talks on Monday to avert action that officials said would hurt the carrier’s slow recovery. A new chairman was named after the talks, meeting part of the pilots’ demands.
ENTERTAINMENT
Disney drops Twitter bid
Walt Disney Co decided not to pursue a bid for Twitter Inc partly out of concern that bullying and other uncivil forms of communication on the social media site might soil the company’s wholesome family image, people familiar with management’s thinking said. The producer of family fare like Finding Dory had gone so far as to hire two investment banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Guggenheim Partners LLC, to help evaluate a bid for Twitter. Disney management also listened to a presentation about the business from Twitter executives, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.
GAMING
Ladbrokes Q3 revenue up
British bookmaker Ladbrokes yesterday reported a 12.1 percent rise in third-quarter net revenue, helped by a bookmaker-friendly and busy summer of sport. The company, which agreed an all-share merger with Gala Coral to create a ￡2.3 billion (US$3.4 billion) betting group, said net revenue for UK Retail rose 1.9 percent in the quarter ended Sept. 30, while European Retail net revenue rose 11.3 percent. Ladbrokes’ digital business revenue jumped 48.2 percent in the quarter. The company said its performance in the quarter was “supportive” of its full-year expectations.
SHIPBUILDING
STX bundled sale likely
A South Korean court handling the bankruptcy case of STX Offshore and Shipbuilding Co, yesterday said that it could announce the bundled sale of the company with its profitable French shipyard unit later this week. STX France, which specializes in building cruise ships, is the only profitable unit of STX Offshore, which filed for receivership in May. Originally it was assumed that the French unit would be sold off separately, but the bankruptcy court signaled its preference for selling the two companies as a package. “The court is seeking to sell STX Offshore together with STX France as one bundle,” said Choi Ung-young, a judge who acts as a spokesman for the Seoul Central District Insolvency Court.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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