BANIKING
ADB shares climate program
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced a new program aimed at financing efforts to counter climate change, stepping up its attempt to back one of its main focuses in the region. The Innovative Finance Facility for Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific (IF-CAP) could create up to US$15 billion in new loans, through a goal of US$3 billion in guarantees, ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa told a news conference in Incheon, South Korea. “The region needs trillions in investment to combat climate change,” Asakawa said. “To help reach that level, we need to maximize our capital in new ways — the IF-CAP will multiply ADB’s lending capacity through leverage,” making it possible to take climate action across sectors and regions, he said.Partner countries including the US and Japan would guarantee a portfolio of ADB’s sovereign loans, helping shoulder some of the losses in case of a credit event in one of its borrowers, the bank said.
ENERGY
BP profits after record loss
British energy giant BP PLC yesterday posted net profit of US$8.2 billion for the first quarter, compared with a record loss a year earlier as it ended operations in Russia. In the first three months of this year, BP recorded its biggest quarterly loss after tax, at US$20.4 billion, as Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine caused its exit from Russian business. A year ago, BP had booked a pre-tax charge of $25.5 billion after abandoning its 19.75 percent stake in energy group Rosneft PJSC, ending more than three decades of investment in Russia. BP CEO Bernard Looney called this year’s first-quarter performance “strong” as the group focuses “on safe and reliable operations.” The company added that it would return US$1.75 billion to shareholders.
AVIATION
JAL recovers from pandemic
Japan Airlines Co (JAL) yesterday logged an annual net profit for the first time in three years, buoyed by soaring domestic and international demand for travel after COVID-19 restrictions were eased. The carrier, Japan’s second-largest by market share, said that net profit for the year to March was ￥34.4 billion (US$250.4 million) — a turnaround from a net loss of ￥177 billion in the previous financial year. “Air passenger demand recovered steadily as the shift toward balancing the COVID-19 pandemic’s prevention and socioeconomic activities gained momentum,” a company statement said. Japan Airlines said that its return to profitability was in part because of “comprehensive cost-cutting efforts and maximizing sales in the cargo business domain.” Last week, rival ANA Holdings Inc reported profitability for the first time in three years, logging a full-year net profit of ￥89 billion.
BANKING
Morgan Stanley to cut staff
Morgan Stanley is planning to cut more jobs after reporting a decline in profit during the first three months of the year, US media reported on Monday. The bank aims to trim its headcount by nearly 4 percent this quarter after ending March with more than 82,000 employees, the reports said. The US investment and financial services giant said in a recent earnings report that its profit dropped 20 percent in the first three months of this year amid a slowdown in mergers and acquisition advising. The global financial institution at the end of last year trimmed about 2 percent of its staff or about 1,600 positions, CNBC reported at the time. Morgan Stanley’s next round of cuts is expected to involve about 3,000 jobs.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
POTENTIAL demand: Tesla’s chance of reclaiming its leadership in EVs seems uncertain, but breakthrough in full self-driving could help boost sales, an analyst said Chinese auto giant BYD Co (比亞迪) is poised to surpass Tesla Inc as the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV) company in annual sales. The two groups are expected to soon publish their final figures for this year, and based on sales data so far this year, there is almost no chance the US company led by CEO Elon Musk would retain its leadership position. As of the end of last month, BYD, which also produces hybrid vehicles, had sold 2.07 million EVs. Tesla, for its part, had sold 1.22 million by the end of September. Tesla’s September figures included a one-time boost in
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