■ BANKING
Eximbank selling stake
Vietnam’s state-owned Export-Import Commercial Joint-Stock Bank, known as Eximbank, will sell a 25 percent stake to four foreign investors, the central bank said yesterday. The Tuoi Tre newspaper placed the value of the shares at US$395 million. Eximbank will sell a 15 percent stake to Sumitomo Mitsui, the State Bank of Vietnam said in a statement on its Web site. VOF Investment Ltd of Virgin Islands will buy 5%, while Mirae Asset Exim Investment Ltd of South Korea will buy 4.5% and Mirae Asset Maps Opportunity Vietnam Equity Balanced Fund 1 will buy a 0.5% stake, the statement said.
■ INTERNET
Yahoo action questioned
A shareholder accused Yahoo Inc of trying to conceal large portions of a shareholder lawsuit alleging the Internet company’s board improperly thwarted Microsoft Corp’s US$47.5 billion takeover offer. In a letter sent on Friday to the judge overseeing the case in Delaware, shareholder attorney Joel Friedlander argued Yahoo was trying “to whitewash embarrassing documents” because the company thought the information would damage the board’s efforts to repel a challenge by activist investor Carl Icahn. The redacted documents include information about an employee severance plan that Yahoo adopted shortly after Microsoft made its initial bid on Jan. 31 and notes about a conversation between Yang and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, he wrote.
■ AUTOMOBILES
Toyota to resume work
Toyota Motor Corp will resume limited production at its plant in Chengdu, China, for the first time in a week after the country’s biggest earthquake in 58 years. The company will cancel one of two daily shifts from tomorrow through Saturday at its plant in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, spokeswoman Hiromi Hirooka said by telephone last night. Toyota lost production of 380 vehicles as of Friday. The plant can build 13,000 vehicles a year. “Our primary concern is the health condition of workers at our factory and suppliers,” Hirooka said.
■ BEVERAGES
California wine pioneer dies
Robert Mondavi, who pioneered the rise of California wines, died on Friday at his home in the Napa Valley region that made him famous. Mondavi had become increasingly frail in recent years and died peacefully at his home, a family spokesman said. The son of Italian immigrants, Mondavi was the first wine-=maker to successfully challenge the dominance of European wines and establish Napa Valley as one of the world’s premier wine regions. He founded his own vineyard Robert Mondavi Winery in 1966, at the age of 52, after being kicked out of his family-owned winery. Using new techniques and employing adventurous young winemakers, Mondavi’s cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay won at the famous Paris tasting of 1976.
■ VIETNAM
Bank to raise interest rates
The central bank said yesterday that it would raise its benchmark interest rate, lifting the maximum return that commercial banks can offer depositors to 18 percent a year. The State Bank of Vietnam will increase the base rate to 12 percent from 8.75 percent tomorrow, according to a statement released in Hanoi yesterday. Under central bank regulations, banks cannot offer savers rates exceeding 150 percent of the base rate.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure