Kenanga Research cut its target price for electronics company Unisem (M) Bhd to RM0.99 from RM1.32, expecting results for the current quarter to be flat due to weakening consumer sentiment.
Consumers are taking a wait-and-see approach amid headwinds in the global economy, Kenanga said in a report on Monday.
"In our view, the company's net profit for the year may only break even at best," said Kenanga, which lowered its growth assumptions for Unisem. It maintained a 'market perform' call on the stock. -- Reuters
Affin Investment Bank raised its target price on Gas Malaysia Bhd shares to RM3 from RM2.80 as the company has secured customers to take up all the additional gas supply for 2013 and 2014 financial years.
About 25 percent extra gas supply kicks in after Petronas Gas starts up its regasification plant in central Malaysia by end-January 2013, Affin said, helping Gas Malaysia lift revenue growth by 8.8 percent for both financial years.
Affin maintained its "add" call on the stock. Gas Malaysia shares were unchanged in morning trade, compared with the broader market that inched lower at 0158 GMT.
Gas Malaysia is the only firm licensed to supply and sell natural gas in mainland Malaysia where demand has been steadily growing. -- Reuters
WASHINGTON — The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday that she will investigate why the panel wasn't briefed in advance about an FBI inquiry that ultimately prompted the resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said lawmakers only learned the details about the FBI probe, which unearthed an affair between the CIA director and his biographer, after Petraeus elected to submit his resignation Thursday to President Obama.
"We received no advance notice,'' Feinstein said on Fox News Sunday. "It was like a lightening bolt.''
The FBI learned of the relationship while investigating harassment allegations leveled by another woman associated with Petraeus. That investigation led to biographer Paula Broadwell and triggered further investigation — because of Petraeus' involvement with Broadwell — to determine whether the director's e-mail accounts had been compromised.
Feinstein said there is no evidence to suggest there was a breach. And she asserted that Petraeus' resignation had no connection to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that left four dead. "Absolutely not,'' Feinstein said, responding to a question about a possible link to the attack in Libya on Sept. 11.
Despite Patreaus' resignation, Feinstein said it was still possible that the former director could be called to testify.
Petraeus quit his post Friday after acknowledging an extramarital relationship.
He had been scheduled to appear before congressional intelligence committees on Thursday to testify on what the CIA knew, and what it told the White House, before, during and after the attacks that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. His former deputy, Michael Morell, now is expected to face lawmakers' questions.
Morell, and FBI deputy director Sean Joyce, will also face tough questions the day before. Both are scheduled to meet with House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., who want to know how the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' downfall came about, according to a senior congressional staffer who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.
Also at question is when the White House was first made aware of the investigation.
Petraeus' sudden departure made news before House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed, catching lawmakers who oversee the intelligence community off-guard, officials said.
FBI officials have explained the committees weren't informed, one official says, because the matter started as a criminal investigation into harassing emails sent by Paula Broadwell, a 40-year-old graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and an Army Reserve officer, to another woman.
The identity of the other woman and her connection with Broadwell were not immediately known, but that probe led agents to Broadwell's e-mail, which uncovered the relationship with Petraeus, a 60-year-old retired four-star general, according to an official who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday.
Concerned that the emails he exchanged with Broadwell raised the possibility of a security breach, the FBI brought the matter up with Petraeus directly, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the investigation.
Petraeus decided to quit, though he was breaking no laws by having an affair, officials said.
"He decided he needed to come clean with the American people," said Steve Boylan, a retired army officer and former Petraeus spokesman who talked with him Saturday.
In a phone call, Petraeus lamented the damage he'd done to his "wonderful family" and the hurt he'd caused his wife, Boylan said. Petraeus has been married for 38 years to Holly Petraeus.
"He screwed up, he knows he screwed up, now he's got to try to get past this with his family and heal," Boylan said.
Broadwell interviewed the general and his close associates intensively for more than a year to produce the best-selling biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, which was written with Vernon Loeb, a Washington Post editor, and published in January.
The CIA did not comment on the identity of the woman with whom Petraeus was involved.
Broadwell is married with two young sons. She has not responded to multiple emails and phone messages. She'd planned to celebrate her 40th birthday in Washington this weekend, with many reporters invited. Her husband e-mailed guests to cancel the party.
CIA officers long had expressed concern about Broadwell's unprecedented access to the director. She frequently visited the spy agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., to meet Petraeus in his office, accompanied him on morning runs around the CIA grounds and often attended public functions as his guest, according to two former intelligence officials.
Petraeus' staff when he was overseeing the war in Afghanistan similarly had been concerned about the time she spent with their boss.
In the preface to her book, Broadwell said she first met Petraeus in the spring of 2006 while she was a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LONDON—The British Broadcasting Corp.'s top executive resigned late Saturday on the heels of the company's mishandling of two sex-abuse scandals.
George Entwistle said he was resigning because of "unacceptable journalistic standards" that the BBC program "Newsnight" displayed on Nov. 2, when it aired a flawed report that appeared to accuse a former politician of committing sex abuse of a child in Wales.
On Sunday morning, the chairman of the BBC's oversight body said the broadcaster would need a "thorough, structural, radical overhaul."
Mr. Entwistle's resignation followed a convulsive sequence of events at the broadcaster. For the past few weeks, it ...
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