AUTOMAKERS
Chinese deliveries shrink
China’s vehicle deliveries last month continued to shrink, extending the market’s historic decline. Sales of sedans, sport utility vehicles, minivans and multipurpose vehicles fell 3.9 percent from a year earlier to 1.53 million units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) said Monday. That is the 13th consecutive monthly decline. Retail sales of cars in China fell last month for the 13th time in the past 14 months, falling 5.3 percent, the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) said last week. Unlike CPCA figures, CAAM’s numbers detail deliveries made to dealerships, not end consumers.
TRAVEL
Thomas Cook seeks liquidity
Thomas Cook Group PLC is seeking an additional ￡150 million (US$180.93 million) to help tide the debt-laden travel giant through the coming winter, when fewer Europeans go on vacation. The additional capital “will provide further liquidity headroom through the coming 2019-2020 winter cash low period and ensure the business can continue to invest in its strategy,” London-based Cook said in a statement yesterday. The 178-year-old holiday firm saw its market value last month fall as low as ￡69 million, compared with ￡2.2 billion at its most recent peak in May last year.
INDUSTRIAL SERVICES
ABB selects next head
ABB Ltd said that Bjorn Rosengren would take over as chief executive officer of the Swiss engineering giant early next year after he leaves the top job at Swedish mining equipment company Sandvik AB. Rosengren, 60, is a seasoned Swedish industrial executive who has been at Sandvik’s helm since November 2015. He is to join ABB in February and take on the CEO role a month later. He was identified last month as the preferred candidate to take over from Peter Voser, the chairman who has been ABB’s interim CEO since Ulrich Spiesshofer abruptly stepped down in April. Voser would revert to his position as chairman, the company said in a statement.
INTERNET
Meesho gains investors
Meesho, an Indian e-commerce site, said that it raised US$125 million from investors, including Naspers Ltd, Facebook Inc and the former chief executive officer of Vodafone Group PLC. The Bangalore-based company allows people to build connections online and then sell through social networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Other investors in the company include Sequoia, Shunwei Capital and Venture Highway. The social commerce start-up said that it has a network of more than 2 million “social sellers” in 700 towns across India, focusing on categories such as apparel, wellness and electronics.
AUTOMAKERS
Tesla car crashes in Moscow
A Tesla Model 3 electric car on Saturday caught fire after crashing into a parked tow truck on a Moscow motorway, with the Tesla driver saying that he failed to see the truck. Asked in a video published on the REN TV Web site if he was using an Autopilot self-driving system, driver Alexei Tretyakov said that he was in a mode with drive assistance in which he was still holding the steering wheel. Tesla Inc has stood by safety claims for its Model 3 in the face of regulatory scrutiny, while the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued at least five subpoenas since last year seeking information about crashes involving the company’s vehicles.
EXTRATERRITORIAL REACH: China extended its legal jurisdiction to ban some dual-use goods of Chinese origin from being sold to the US, even by third countries Beijing has set out to extend its domestic laws across international borders with a ban on selling some goods to the US that applies to companies both inside and outside China. The new export control rules are China’s first attempt to replicate the extraterritorial reach of US and European sanctions by covering Chinese products or goods with Chinese parts in them. In an announcement this week, China declared it is banning the sale of dual-use items to the US military and also the export to the US of materials such as gallium and germanium. Companies and people overseas would be subject to
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday said that Intel Corp would find itself in the same predicament as it did four years ago if its board does not come up with a core business strategy. Chang made the remarks in response to reporters’ questions about the ailing US chipmaker, once an archrival of TSMC, during a news conference in Taipei for the launch of the second volume of his autobiography. Intel unexpectedly announced the immediate retirement of former chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger last week, ending his nearly four-year tenure and ending his attempts to revive the
WORLD DOMINATION: TSMC’s lead over second-placed Samsung has grown as the latter faces increased Chinese competition and the end of clients’ product life cycles Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) retained the No. 1 title in the global pure-play wafer foundry business in the third quarter of this year, seeing its market share growing to 64.9 percent to leave South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, the No. 2 supplier, further behind, Taipei-based TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report. TSMC posted US$23.53 billion in sales in the July-September period, up 13.0 percent from a quarter earlier, which boosted its market share to 64.9 percent, up from 62.3 percent in the second quarter, the report issued on Monday last week showed. TSMC benefited from the debut of flagship
TENSE TIMES: Formosa Plastics sees uncertainty surrounding the incoming Trump administration in the US, geopolitical tensions and China’s faltering economy Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團), Taiwan’s largest industrial conglomerate, yesterday posted overall revenue of NT$118.61 billion (US$3.66 billion) for last month, marking a 7.2 percent rise from October, but a 2.5 percent fall from one year earlier. The group has mixed views about its business outlook for the current quarter and beyond, as uncertainty builds over the US power transition and geopolitical tensions. Formosa Plastics Corp (台灣塑膠), a vertically integrated supplier of plastic resins and petrochemicals, reported a monthly uptick of 15.3 percent in its revenue to NT$18.15 billion, as Typhoon Kong-rey postponed partial shipments slated for October and last month, it said. The
RSS