Finance

Small and medium-sized companies are being targeted by skills council SEMTA in a drive to encourage the recruitment of an extra 500 engineering apprentices. The scheme, called the Sponsored Advanced Modern Apprenticeship 500+, aims to put an extra 500 people through Advanced Modern Apprenticeships with companies employing less than 250 people. SEMTA employs apprentices on one-year training contracts for initial ...

Cambridge firm signs deal with US company

The World Semiconductor Council (WSC) held its eighth annual meeting in Busan, Korea, on Thursday to address IP, environmental and trade issues. Highlights of the meeting, chaired by Chang Gyu Hwang of Samsung Electronics, included the creation of a new IP taskforce that adopted a policy paper detailing a multi-pronged approach for IP protection of layout designs of ICs. This ...

Small and medium-sized manufacturers are seeing new orders rise for the first time in over three years, according to the latest CBI quarterly survey of SMEs. But the strong pound continues to hit exporters with a hoped-for improvement in overseas orders not coming through. Total orders rose over the past quarter, with 33 per cent of firms saying new orders ...

The Institute of Electrical Engineers is on the lookout for the UK’s most outstanding primary and secondary school teachers for the 2004 IEE National Teacher Awards. The annual awards recognise the enthusiasm, dedication and good practice of teachers who encourage students to develop a keen interest in subjects appropriate to electrical, electronic and manufacturing engineering. Up to 12 awards will ...

Bookham Technology has reaffirmed its commitment to UK manufacturing, despite poor results and plans to move its nominal headquarters and primary stock market listing to the US. “We are not shutting our UK sites,” Bookham CEO Giorgio Anania told Electronics Weekly. There are plans for significant cost-cutting actions this year as the optoelectronic semiconductor device manufacturer sees the strong pound eating ...

The fabless/foundry semiconductor business model is at risk of being swamped by the greater efficiency of their fab-owning rivals, the traditional semiconductor manufacturers. “For fabless companies – if they are not fully supported – it might be very difficult,” Hideo Inayoshi, senior vice president and board director at Renesas Technology, told the Future Horizons IEF 2004 conference in Prague last ...

The rate of industrial job losses has been slowed, said the CBI today, as it released quarterly figures showing a rise in orders at manufacturing firms. During 2003 some 25,000 UK manufacturing jobs were lost every three months, a rate which has now reduced to 17,000 per quarter, according to the Regional Trends Survey from the CBI and Experian. “Prospects ...

Citing strong performance across all its product families, STMicroelectronics today saw its Q1 revenues climb by 25.4 per cent year-over-year. The Geneva-based company posted revenues of $2.03bn, up from $1.618bn during the same period a year ago but down four per cent sequentially. “For the first time ST’s first quarter revenues exceeded the $2bn mark,” said Pasquale Pistorio, president and ...

Infineon Technologies has announced first quarter results with revenues three per cent higher than the previous quarter at €1.67bn, while net profit increased by 15 per cent to €39m. “Business performance not only improved because of the overall strong customer demand but also because of improved productivity,” said Max Dietrich Kley, acting CEO of Infineon. Kley said he expected revenues ...