TRADE
Lee Hsien Loong eyes RCEP
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) yesterday said he hoped to complete by the end of the year a massive China-backed regional trade pact. The 16-nation Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is poised to become the largest free-trade agreement in the world. It would group the 10 members of the ASEAN plus China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
BANKING
DBS posts Q2 profit
DBS Group Holdings Ltd, Southeast Asia’s biggest lender, posted higher second-quarter profit, but failed to meet analysts’ expectations on a 32 percent drop in other non-interest income. Net income rose 20 percent to S$1.37 billion (US$1 billion) in the three months to June from S$1.14 billion a year earlier, the Singapore-based bank said yesterday. That compared with the S$1.44 billion average forecast in a Bloomberg survey of six analysts.
BANKING
ING adds 400,000 customers
ING Groep NV added 400,000 new customers in the second quarter and bounced back from disappointing fee and commission income earlier in the year to post better-than-expected results. Net commission income, which had declined because of the lender’s Belgian unit, recovered to 717 million euros in the three months through June, beating estimates. The lender also had better-than-expected profit, with chief financial officer Koos Timmermans hinting that the bank could be in a position to boost its dividend.
CONGLOMERATES
Siemens’ profit falls 14%
Falling demand for gas turbines weighed on Siemens AG’s quarterly earnings yesterday, but the German conglomerate stuck to its confident outlook as it unveiled a major revamp to make its industrial divisions more profitable. Net profit at the sprawling group plunged 14 percent to 1.2 billion euros (US$1.4 billion) in the third quarter of its financial year, compared with the same period a year earlier. Revenue at Siemens — which also builds trains, industrial robots and medical scanners — fell 4 percent to 20.5 billion euros, slightly below analysts’ expectations.
AERO ENGINES
Rolls-Royce eyes earnings
Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC yesterday said that full-year earnings would be at the upper end of a forecast range after job cuts and a management revamp helped the UK aero-engine maker beat first-half estimates. London-based Rolls-Royce expects to post an underlying operating profit of about ￡450 million (US$590 million) for this year, plus or minus ￡100 million, it said in a statement. Free cash flow will be about ￡400 million with the same margin for error, it said.
AUTOMAKERS
BMW profit declines
Net profit at BMW AG fell 6 percent in the second quarter as it spent more on developing new technologies for electric, autonomous and digitally connected vehicles, the company said yesterday. Profit came in at 2.08 billion euros, down from 2.22 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenue fell 2.9 percent to 25.02 billion euros. The company said it spent 2.61 billion euros on research and development over the first six months of the year, up 13.6 percent from a year earlier, and has sold 61,000 electric vehicles so far this year, an increase of 42 percent.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
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