■ Construction
Directors quit over asbestos
Three directors of building products company James Hardie, including its chairwoman, Meredith Hellicar, resigned yesterday after Australia's corporate watchdog launched legal action against the firm. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) accused James Hardie Industries earlier this month of allegedly misleading the stockmarket about its liabilities to asbestos disease victims. The ASIC action named 10 current and former executives and board members, including Hellicar. The two others who resigned were non-executive directors Michael Brown and Michael Gillfillan. ASIC chairman Jeffrey Lucy said the action would not affect the deal under which James Hardie agreed to pay US$1.55 billion into a compensation fund that will pay out an estimated US$4 billion over the next 40 years.
■ Internet
`Sex addict' vet sues IBM
A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room during the workday is suing the computer company for US$5 million in White Plains, New York, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal. James Pacenza, 58, says he visits chat rooms as treatment for traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in the Vietnam War. In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the stress caused him to become "a sex addict, and with the development of the Internet, an Internet addict." He claimed protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
■ Aerospace
Bombardier unveils new jet
Canadian aerospace firm Bombardier on Monday announced plans to build a 100-seat regional jet to compete with Brazilian rival Embraer. The CRJ1000 will be launched at the end of 2009, four years after Embraer introduced its 190 model, the Montreal-based company said. Bombardier said it has already received 38 firm orders for the aircraft from Air France subsidiary Brit Air, Italy's My Way Airlines and a third unnamed airline, worth about US$2 billion. Two of these airlines may opt to buy another 23 jets, the company said. Company president Pierre Beaudoin said the CRJ1000 would weigh 12.5 tonnes less than Embraer's 190, use smaller engines and cost 15 percent less to fly.
■ Casinos
Virgin-Tabcorp tie-up fails
A proposed partnership between Britain's Virgin conglomerate and Australia's Tabcorp to open a casino in Macau has collapsed, a report said yesterday. "We can't see that partnership going anywhere," a source told the South China Morning Post English-language daily. Virgin boss Richard Branson had been tipped to join with Tabcorp on the US$3.0 billion project after he visited the city last month with the Australian gambling outfit's Matthew Slater.
■ Automakers
Hyundai sets up Brazil plant
South Korea's top automaker, Hyundai Motor, is building a car plant in Brazil, its first in Latin America, the company said yesterday. The CAOA group, a distributor of Hyundai cars in Brazil, will foot the entire bill for the construction while the South Korean firm supplies it with auto parts, a Hyundai spokesman said. Maeil Business Newspaper said CAOA was investing US$250 million in building the plant at Anapolis south of Brasilia. The plant, expected to open in the first half of this year, will produce 50,000 vehicles a year by 2009, Hyundai said.
■ Memory chips
Elpida sells line to Cension
Elpida Memory Inc, Japan's sole memory chipmaker, will sell its 200mm wafer production line to a partner of China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) to focus on more advanced technology. Cension Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, which is based in Sichuan, China, will buy the line in Japan for an undisclosed amount and make chips for Shanghai-based SMIC, Elpida said on Monday in a filing. "We are moving our resources from 200mm wafer lines to reinforce the 300mm wafer production line," Elpida said. "It's important for us to aggressively offer faster, less energy-consuming memory chips."
■ Petrochemicals
Firms fined for price rigging
South Korea's antitrust watchdog said yesterday that it had fined 10 local petrochemical companies a total of US$111 million for rigging the prices of plastic products. The Fair Trade Commission accused the companies of having held monthly price-fixing meetings since 1994 on their polypropylene and high-density polyethylene products, mostly used for plastic containers and bottles. The 10 companies were fined a total of 105.1 billion won (US$111.8 million), it said.
■ Aviation
Airbus to cut 10,000 jobs
Airbus' major restructuring strategy includes 10,000 job cuts, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced yesterday, adding that his government would oppose any cutbacks in the form of layoffs. A day earlier, Airbus said an announcement on its long-awaited restructuring plan -- called the "Power8" turnaround strategy -- had been delayed. The European aircraft maker called off a works council meeting and news conference at which the strategy would have been unveiled yesterday. Villepin told RTL radio that French President Jacques Chirac would discuss the issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a meeting on Friday.
■ Insurance
Rates pressure Prudential
Prudential Plc, the UK's second-biggest insurer, is coming under pressure to slash the value of its Taiwanese life business by as much as ?700 million (US$1.31 billion, NT$43.23 billion) when it reports full-year results next month, the Independent newspaper reported yesterday, without citing sources. The paper said Prudential would likely follow the lead set by Dutch rival ING in cutting the value of its business in Taiwan, where the UK firm has a large number of life insurance policies offering guaranteed returns of up to 7 percent. With local interest rates running at 2.75 percent, Prudential can no longer cover those guarantees by investing in government and local corporate bonds, the paper said.
■ State firms
Indonesia to cut holdings
Indonesia will reduce the number of state-owned companies from 139 to 69 by 2009 through privatization or liquidation, Vice President Jusuf Kalla said. "The target in 2009 is set at 69 state-owned companies. Some of them should be merged, privatised or liquidated," the official Antara news agency quoted him as saying late on Monday. Kalla said that number could be further cut to 25 by 2015. He said state firms' profit before tax was projected to grow 22.50 percent this year to reach 88.75 trillion rupiah (US$980 million), against a projected 72.44 trillion last year.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to