MINING
Avocet names new CEO
West Africa-focused Avocet Mining PLC named Boudewijn Wentink as its new chief executive officer with immediate effect, as it seeks to refinance and restructure the company. Its current chief executive officer David Cather will remain on the board as technical director, Avocet said. The miner also named Yolanda Bolleurs as chief financial officer with immediate effect to replace Jim Wynn, who will leave the company at the end of this month to take up the same position at Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd. “Boudewijn’s primary strategic objective will be to achieve the refinancing and restructuring that is critical to the future of the company,” Avocet said. The company said production at Inata, one of Burkina Faso’s largest gold mines, continues to be affected by the suspension of operations in October and November last year.
BANKING
Bankers unhappy in Japan
An increasing number of bankers working at foreign firms in Japan are unhappy with their bonuses, and falling expectations for raises are giving them more cause to gripe, according to a Morgan McKinley survey. Forty percent of respondents were dissatisfied with their bonuses, up from 28 percent in last year’s’s survey. About 51 percent received indication from their employers that their base salary will rise this year, a 5 percentage point drop. Despite the gripes over pay, the bankers were optimistic on Japan’s economic outlook. About 84 percent of the respondents were neutral, positive or very positive on the world’s third-biggest economy over the next 12 months, compared with 63 percent last year. Morgan McKinley based its survey on the responses of 257 employees at about 40 mainly foreign financial firms, which it did not identify.
UNITED KINGDOM
Babcock to support navy
Babcock International Group PLC said it was selected as a preferred bidder for a deal worth about ￡360 million (US$450.52 million) to provide support services to Royal Navy warships over seven years. The engineering outsourcing firm will manage the technical configuration of systems for two classes of navy vessels, supply spares and provide in-service support, Babcock said. Britain’s outsourcing market, the second biggest in the world behind the US, has been hit in recent months as clients in the private and public sectors delay new spending decisions. This has prompted profit warnings from Capita and Mitie. However, Babcock last month said that it expects to benefit from US President Donald Trump’s demand that NATO members spend more on defense. Babcock offers engineering and technology-related services to the defense, energy, emergency services, transport and education sectors.
STOCK MARKET
TAQA announce record loss
Shares in Abu Dhabi National Energy Co, the oil company known as TAQA, extended gains that drove them to a two-month high on Sunday even after announcing a record earnings loss. The stock rose 7.7 percent to 0.56 United Arab Emirates Dirhams as of 10:32am in Abu Dhabi yesterday, adding to the previous day’s 13 percent advance. Trading volume was about 30 times the 30-day average for the time of day. TAQA on Thursday said it lost 19 billion United Arab Emirates dirhams (US$5.2 billion) last year, compared with 1.8 billion dirhams in 2015, amid one-time impairments.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Apple Inc increased iPhone production in India by about 53 percent last year and now makes a quarter of its marquee devices there, reflecting the US company’s efforts to avoid tariffs on China. The company assembled about 55 million iPhones in India last year, up from 36 million a year earlier, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the numbers aren’t public. Apple makes about 220 million to 230 million iPhones a year globally, with India’s share of the total increasing rapidly. Apple has accelerated its expansion in the world’s most populous country in recent years, bolstered
HEADWINDS: The company said it expects its computer business, as well as consumer electronics and communications segments to see revenue declines due to seasonality Pegatron Corp (和碩) yesterday said it aims to grow its artificial intelligence (AI) server revenue more than 10-fold this year from last year, driven by orders from neocloud solutions clients and large cloud service providers. The electronics manufacturing service provider said AI server revenue growth would be driven primarily by the Nvidia Corp GB300 server platform. Server shipments are expected to increase each quarter this year, with the second half likely to outperform the first half, it said. The AI server market is expected to broaden this year as more inference applications emerge, which would drive demand for system-on-chip, application-specific integrated circuits
PROJECTION: TSMC said it expects strong growth this year, with revenue in US dollars projected to grow by about 30 percent, outperforming the industry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported consolidated sales last month reached NT$317.66 billion (US$9.98 billion), the highest ever for the month of February, driven by robust demand for chips built using the company’s advanced 3-nanometer (3nm) process. Last month’s figure was up 22.2 percent from a year earlier, but fell 20.8 percent from January, the world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement. For the first two months of the year, TSMC posted cumulative sales of NT$718.91 billion, up 29.9 percent from a year earlier. Analysts attributed the growth to sustained global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) products
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