Tue, Aug 07, 2018 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  BANKS

  HSBC profit rises 4.6%

  Global bank HSBC Holdings PLC yesterday reported that its pre-tax profit in the first half of the year rose 4.6 percent as its strategy focused on growing markets paid off. The London-based bank’s US$10.7 billion pre-tax profit in the January-to-June period compared with US$10.2 billion a year earlier. Quarterly pre-tax profit surged to US$5.96 billion from US$4.8 billion in the second quarter last year. The bank said net profit was US$7.2 billion in the first half, up from US$7 billion a year earlier, while revenue rose 4.2 percent from a year earlier to US$27.2 billion from US$26.2 billion a year earlier. Total assets climbed to US$2.61 trillion as of June 30 from US$2.52 trillion as of Dec. 30 last year, it said.

  TOBACCO

  Japan Tobacco buys Akij

  Japan Tobacco Inc agreed to purchase Bangladesh’s second-largest cigarette maker for 124.3 billion takas (US$1.5 billion) as the company continues to expand its presence in emerging markets. The maker of Mevius and Winston cigarettes is acquiring the tobacco business of Akij Group, which holds about a 20 percent share of the market in Bangladesh, Japan Tobacco said in a statement yesterday. The tobacco company has been buying up businesses in markets where smoking is more prevalent, which has helped cushion sales in the face of tighter smoking regulations in most areas around the globe.

  TECHNOLOGY

  Softbank profit increases

  Japanese company Softbank Group Corp said its profits grew to ￥313.7 billion (US$2.8 billion) in the latest quarter as it saw gains in its main investment fund. The results reported yesterday represent a more than 50-fold increase in profits for the April-to-June quarter compared with the same period last year. Sales edged up 4 percent to ￥2.3 trillion. Softbank’s Vision Fund in May agreed to sell its stake in Indian online retailer Flipkart Pvt Ltd to Walmart Inc. Sales were flat at the Tokyo-based company’s US mobile provider Sprint Corp, dropping 0.4 percent to US$8.1 billion.

  GERMANY

  Factory orders drop 4%

  Official data showed that factory orders dropped a steep 4 percent in June compared with the previous month, led lower by a drop in demand from outside the eurozone. The figure released yesterday by the Ministry of Economic Affairs compared with a gain of 2.6 percent the previous month. The ministry said that orders in the second quarter were down 1.6 percent overall compared with the previous quarter, largely because of lower demand for investment goods such as factory machinery.

  INDONESIA

  Economy makes gain in Q2

  The economy rose 5.3 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the Bureau of Statistics bureau said in Jakarta yesterday. While that was better than the 5.1 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey and is the fastest pace since 2013, it is nowhere near the 7 percent goal President Joko Widodo set for himself when he took office in 2014. Compared with the previous quarter, GDP rose 4.2 percent, the bureau said. In the second quarter, household consumption increased 5.1 percent from a year earlier, while government spending rose 5.3 percent and fixed capital formation grew 5.9 percent, it said.
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