An Intel logo is seen at the company's offices in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv October 24, 2011.

TEL AVIV | Sun Feb 17, 2013 7:53am EST

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Intel's Israeli subsidiary more than doubled its exports in 2012 to $4.6 billion and is seeking to bring manufacturing of the company's next generation of chips to Israel.

Intel's exports, which rose 109 percent from $2.2 billion in 2011, were boosted by the start of production of chips using 22 nanometer technology at its Kiryat Gat plant in southern Israel, which is now operating at full capacity.

Intel, the world's No. 1 chipmaker, will build chips over the next two to three years with features measuring just 14 nm in Ireland and the United States but the company is already thinking about where it will produce 10 nm chips. The narrower the features, the more transistors can fit on a single chip, improving performance.

Intel Israel executives said they would like to see 10 nm production in Israel.

"The average life of a technology is two to six years so we need to be busy to get the next technology, 10 nanometer," Maxine Fassberg, general manager of Intel Israel, told a news conference on Sunday. "We need to get a decision far enough in advance to be able to upgrade the plant. So for 10 nanometer, decisions will need to be made this year."

Fassberg said upgrading the existing Fab 28 plant in Israel would require a lower investment than building a new plant but would still involve several billion dollars.

Intel Israel has in the past received government grants to help with the costs of its investments and Fassberg told Reuters the company was "constantly in talks with the government".

Intel has invested $10.5 billion in Israel in the past decade, including $1.1 billion in 2012, and has received $1.3 billion in government grants.

The company accounted for 20 percent of Israel's high-tech exports last year and 10 percent of its industrial exports, excluding diamonds.

"If Intel had not increased its exports, Israel's high-tech exports would have shrunk by 10 percent," Intel Israel President Mooly Eden said.

Most of Intel Israel's exports - $3.5 billion - came from its chip manufacturing activities.

Intel is Israel's largest private employer, with 8,542 workers, up 10 percent from 2011. The company has two plants - in Jerusalem and Kiryat Gat - as well as four research and development centers.

Eden said Intel was also committed to investing in start-ups, having invested in 64 Israeli companies since 1996. In July its global investment arm Intel Capital said it would expand its operations in Israel.

(Reporting by Tova Cohen; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

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Washers and dryers are seen on display at a store in New York July 28, 2010.

WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 21, 2012 8:38am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A gauge of planned U.S. business spending rose much more than expected in November, a hint that worries over tighter fiscal policy may not be holding back the factory sector as much as feared.

The Commerce Department said on Friday that non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched proxy for investment plans, jumped 2.7 percent last month, the second straight month of solid gains.

Economists had expected so-called core capital goods orders to rise just 0.3 percent. The reading for October was upwardly revised to a 3.2 percent gain from a previously reported 2.9 percent increase.

Shipments of non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, used to calculate equipment and software spending in the gross domestic product report, gained 1.8 percent.

The Commerce Department gave no indication that Superstorm Sandy, which lashed the East Coast in late October, had any impact on the data.

Many economists believe businesses are cutting back on capital spending, wary of automatic government spending cuts and tax increases scheduled to kick in early next year unless the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration can agree on a plan to avert this so-called "fiscal cliff."

Going over the cliff could drain about $600 billion from an already fragile economy.

Overall durable goods orders rose 0.7 percent in November, with increases posted for machinery, fabricated metal products, and computer and electronic products offsetting a drag from aircraft.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast orders for durable goods, items from toasters to aircraft that are meant to last at least three years, rising 0.2 percent last month.

Excluding transportation, orders rose 1.6 percent in November. Transport orders were down 1.1 percent. Previously, U.S. manufacturer Boeing reported new orders for its aircraft fell in November to 124 from 152 in the prior month.

New orders for autos jumped 3.5 percent. U.S. auto sales in November raced to a five-year high for that month on a rebound from storm-ravaged October and the need to replace aging vehicles.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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NEW YORK | Fri Sep 28, 2012 5:45pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tim Buckley, who takes over as chief investment officer at The Vanguard Group in January, has never managed money in his 20 years at the firm. He has no plans to make big market calls and he won't micro-manage his team's thinking or strategies.

There isn't any of the swagger you might expect from a guy charged with running the money at the No.1 U.S. fund company. Instead, the 43-year-old father of three says his top priority is to focus the firm's 300-strong group of portfolio managers, analysts and traders to be more efficient.

That's something Buckley says is crucial to help Vanguard maintain its place as the lowest-cost provider of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. "There is only one firm that is lowest cost," Buckley said.

Vanguard's approach, whether seen as cheapskate or value for money, has helped the firm surpass rival Fidelity Investments to become the largest U.S. provider of open-end and closed-end mutual funds and ETFs. Vanguard, based in suburban Philadelphia, has $1.9 trillion in mutual fund, closed-end and variable annuity assets, up from $1.33 trillion five years ago, according to Lipper, a unit of Thomson Reuters.

Vanguard offers actively-managed equity funds - most are managed by outside firms like Wellington Investments and PRIMECAP Management Company. But its bread and butter has been in passive management, which has been popular in recent years after many active managers failed to deliver returns.

"Vanguard owns the low-cost attribute in the public's minds," said Don Phillips, president of Morningstar's investment research division. "Whereas Fidelity wanted to own equity performance, Vanguard wanted low cost, and that gave it a leg up."

Much of Vanguard's recent growth has come from its exchange-traded fund business. The firm's U.S. market share in ETFs has increased 29 percent in the past two years. It now holds 17.9 percent of the market, whittling away at the dominance of competitor BlackRock Inc, which has seen its market share fall to 40.6 percent from 46.6 over the same period.

BlackRock and others are slashing costs on ETFs to match or undercut Vanguard. Early in September, BlackRock's Chairman and CEO Laurence Fink announced that the firm will lower expenses on a number of its ETFs to better compete with Vanguard. And on September 20, Charles Schwab Corp. chopped fees by as much as 59 percent on its ETFs - with some being offered at a mere 7 cents for each $100 invested.

On average, Vanguard's ETFs cost 17 cents for every $100 invested, with the cheapest ETF costing 5 cents for $100 invested.

Buckley, who was on Harvard University's premier rowing team all four years, welcomes the competition and has no intention of giving up ground over prices.

"If you undercut us today, be prepared to do it again tomorrow," he said. "We won't just lower costs on one or two funds, we will do it across the board."

Since most of Vanguard's funds track indexes, having an investing expert as chief investment officer may not be necessary. What's more, Buckley's razor sharp focus on the bottom line may be exactly what Vanguard needs right now, Phillips said.

HOMEGROWN CIO

Buckley, who has held a variety of roles at Vanguard - including chief information officer and head of the retail group - will be fighting the market share battle while also trying to maintain Vanguard's no-frills culture. It's something firm founder Jack Bogle worries could be impeded by Vanguard's growth and size.

"With bigness you can get bureaucracy and complacency," said Bogle, emphasizing the importance of Vanguard remaining "a place where judgment has a fighting chance against process." Bogle, who retired from Vanguard in 1996, continues to give speeches and write books emphasizing the importance of long-term investing and sharing his views about the state of the mutual fund industry.

During his senior year at Harvard, Buckley, who majored in economics, considered pursuing a career in medicine like his mother, a nurse, and his father, who headed the cardiac surgical unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.

But then he met Bogle, and he realized he could go into finance and serve a purpose. As CEO Bogle's assistant, Buckley handled a number of projects, including helping Bogle research his first book. Buckley returned to Harvard for an M.B.A., but came back to Vanguard after graduation.

His next job was to help create a competitive analysis for Vanguard, detailing - and tracking - the firm's main rivals. That project gave Buckley perspective on how industry players compete and what gave Vanguard's model as a mutual company an advantage, he said.

Vanguard is owned by its customers, with profits invested back into the business. That makes it nearly impossible for publicly-traded competitors who answer to shareholders to compete on cost, experts said.

Vanguard is trying to maintain its pricing edge while also growing around the world. Over the past five years, the firm has gone from 12,000 employees in just six offices to 13,500 employees in 15 offices worldwide.

Since June, Buckley, who gets up every morning at 5 a.m. to ride a few miles on his bike before work, has been traveling to Vanguard's offices around the world to observe traders and managers at work so that he could find ways to increase efficiency.

He has identified that in certain regions the real-time systems Vanguard used to get cash flow into the funds are not necessarily being used in all of Vanguard's international locations.

Vanguard is in the middle of an effort to standardize its investment management IT across the globe.

Buckley's other priorities center around developing the firm's managers and establishing global best practices around that process.

Buckley's previous experience as chief information officer and head of Vanguard's information and technology division will help a lot in combating inefficiencies that crop up in global organization, said Gus Sauter, who Buckley is replacing as chief investment officer.

"My strength was more on growing the business and his strengths are more on managing a business," said Sauter, who is retiring after 25 years.

In some ways, Buckley's biggest challenge is to make sure he doesn't mess up a good thing, said Dan Wiener, who runs a newsletter for Vanguard investors.

"The biggest mistake they could make is to try to change anything," he said.

(Reporting By Jessica Toonkel; Editing by Jennifer Merritt, Lauren Young, Martin Howell, Bernard Orr)

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