TOURISM
Airbnb exits China
Airbnb Inc yesterday announced that it would stop representing short-term rental properties in China and focus its business in the nation on serving Chinese tourists looking for lodgings abroad. Airbnb joins a series of foreign Internet companies, including Yahoo Inc and eBay Inc, that have pulled out of China after running into fierce local competition and regulatory barriers. “We have made the difficult decision to refocus our efforts in China on outbound travel and suspend our homes and Experiences of Hosts in China, starting from July 30, 2022,” Airbnb China chief strategy officer Nathan Blecharczyk said in a statement on its social media account.
AUDITORS
KPMG, Sykes fined
The UK’s Financial Reporting Council has fined KPMG and its partner Anthony Sykes over its 2010 audit of Rolls-Royce Group PLC, the latest in a long list of audit scandals surrounding the firm. KPMG was ordered to pay £3.4 million (US$4.3 million), reduced from an original fine of £4.5 million because the firm admitted its shortcomings, the Financial Reporting Council said in a statement yesterday. An external independent expert is to assess the firm’s policies, guidance and procedures for audit work. Sykes must pay a sanction of £112,500, which was also reduced for admissions and early disposal from £150,000.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Snap lowers its forecasts
Snap Inc has cut its revenue and profit forecasts below the low end of its previous guidance, sending its shares plunging as much as 31 percent on Monday. The company is also to slow hiring, filling 500 roles before the end of the year, Snap chief executive officer Evan Spiegel said in a note to staff. “Like many companies, we continue to face rising inflation and interest rates, supply chain shortages and labor disruptions, platform policy changes, the impact of the war in Ukraine, and more,” he wrote in the memo. The company’s second-quarter forecast, for 20 to 25 percent year-on-year revenue growth, was already below analysts’ estimates.
AIRLINES
Carrier to issue new shares
Air France-KLM yesterday announced a bid to raise 2.26 billion euros (US$2.42 billion) by issuing new shares, as the debt-laden company seeks to put the COVID-19 crisis that has ravaged its finances behind it. The pandemic cost the Franco-Dutch airline about 11 billion euros over two years, after travel ground to a halt. The airline has about 7.7 billion euros of debt, despite massive bailouts by the French and Dutch governments, which own minority stakes in the former flag carriers that merged in 2004.
BANKING
UBS clients holding funds
UBS Group AG chief executive officer Ralph Hamers said the Swiss bank’s wealth clients are staying invested while holding back from putting new funds to work because of the uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis. Hamers expects greater clarity on the direction of markets within the next three months as the world comes to terms with the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation in China, as well as soaring energy prices and the Russian invasion, he said in a Bloomberg TV interview from Davos, Switzerland, yesterday. “We had to digest three major shocks: the pandemic shock, the war shock and the energy transition shock,” Hamers said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”