CHINA
Industry trends upward
Profits at Chinese industrial enterprises grew for a fourth consecutive month, as the country’s factories maintained momentum following the COVID-19 shutdown. Industrial profits rose 19 percent last month, after July’s 19.6 percent increase, data from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics published yesterday showed. For the first eight months of the year, it was still down 4.4 percent from a year earlier. The increase was due to factors including the continued recovery of production and demand, and falling operational costs, the bureau said.
Banking
New Commerzbank chair
Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-largest bank, which has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Wirecard scandal, on Saturday named Manfred Knof as its new chairman. The appointment is a bid to end turmoil after Martin Zielke resigned in early July, following sustained criticism by shareholders of his performance and the bank’s losses. Knof, 55, was Deutsche Bank AG’s German retail head, but spent a large part of his career in the insurance business, working for German giant Allianz AG.
Semiconductors
Kioxia not to go public
Kioxia Holdings Corp, the memory chipmaker spun out of Toshiba Corp in 2018, is to cancel its initial public offering plan to list its shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei Business magazine reported. The decision came due to deepening political tensions between the US and China expected to sharply weigh on the chipmaker’s profitability, the report said, without disclosing its source. A Kioxia spokesperson could not immediately comment on the Nikkei report.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last