BANKING
NAB profit down 51 percent
Australian bank investors yesterday got their first taste of what is set to be a horror earnings season, as National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB) reported a 51 percent plunge in profit, slashed its dividend and embarked on a A$3.5 billion (US$2.3 billion) capital raising. The early announcement — the lender was not due to report until next week — has shareholders bracing for the worst earnings season since the global financial crisis. Melbourne-based National Australia set aside A$807 million to reflect the potential economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, although it warned that that could triple in the worst-case scenario of a prolonged recession and persistently high unemployment.
AUTOMAKERS
Daimler stabilizes in China
Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler AG has seen business stabilize in China after the country ended coronavirus lockdowns, Markus Schaefer, managing board member for production at the German automaker, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday. “In China alone, we sold around 50,000 vehicles again in March. That makes us confident,” Schaefer said. Mercedes-Benz delivered a total of about 477,400 passenger vehicles worldwide between January and last month.
CHINA
Industrial profits down
Profits of industrial companies continued to fall as business activity struggled to recover from the aftermath of the coronavirus. Industrial profits last month dropped 34.9 percent from a year earlier, improving slightly from a 38.3 percent decline in the first two months of the year, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday. The improvement was due to faster output and better product sales, it said in a statement. However, great downward pressure still exists, it added.
ENERGY
US oil falls below US$15
US oil prices yesterday fell heavily and slipped below US$15 a barrel on renewed storage concerns as the coronavirus throttles demand, even as producers have begun slashing output to boost markets. US benchmark West Texas Intermediate dropped 15 percent to US$14.39 a barrel in Asian afternoon trade, reversing direction after several days of gains last week. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was off nearly 6 percent at US$20.16 a barrel. Last week, US oil fell below zero for the first time as investors scrambled to offload it before the expiry of a trading contract, but could not readily find buyers.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
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