■INVESTMENT
Nomura eyes Lehman Bros
The president of Japan’s biggest brokerage house, Nomura Holdings, said the company was considering buying a stake in troubled US investment bank Lehman Brothers, a report said yesterday. The move would be part of a plan to spend more than ¥200 billion (US$1.9 billion) on investment in US and European financial institutions, Kenichi Watanabe said in an interview in the Yomiuri Shimbun. Lehman “is one of the candidates in which we plan to invest,” Watanabe said without elaborating.
■LABOR
Strike on at Boeing
Despite a 48-hour contract extension, negotiations between Boeing Co and Machinists union officials have failed and the union declared: “The strike is on!” The Machinists bargain for about 25,000 aircraft assembly workers in the Puget Sound area and about 2,000 more in Wichita, Kansas, and Portland, Oregon. Picket lines went up in Wichita early yesterday and West Coast machinists were due to walk out at 12:01am PDT (7:01 GMT).
■ECONOMY
Indonesia turns to deficit
Indonesia recorded its first current account deficit in almost three years for the second quarter of this year as oil prices increased. Southeast Asia’s biggest economy turned to a US$1.5 billion deficit in its current account in the three months to June, from a US$2.3 billion surplus in the first quarter, the nation’s central bank said in a statement dated Friday. Indonesia’s trade surplus narrowed as growth in non-oil exports slowed, while its oil trade deficit widened.
■MINING
Vale breaks ground in Peru
Brazilian mining company Vale broke ground on Friday on a US$479 million phosphate mine in Peru, becoming the second Brazilian company to announce a major investment there this week. Vale’s Bayovar mine, set to open in 2010 in the northern province of Piura, will produce about 3.9 million tonnes of phosphate a year, Companhia Vale do Rio Doce SA announced in a statement. The mine has 238 million tonnes of phosphate reserves, which are mostly used to produce phosphate fertilizers. The investment will turn Peru into an exporter of phosphorous rock and eventually of phosphate fertilizer, Peruvian President Alan Garcia said at the inauguration ceremony.
■AVIATION
Bank denies Alitalia rumor
The bank overseeing the relaunch of Italy’s ailing national airline Alitalia denied a report on Friday that it had offered a stake of between 10 percent and 20 percent to Air France-KLM, the ANSA news agency said. “There is absolutely no basis” to the report in the French daily La Tribune, the agency quoted a spokesman for the Intesa Sanpaolo bank as saying. La Tribune had said Intesa Sanpaolo offered the stake in secret and “held out the possibility that Air France-KLM could become the majority shareholder in five years’ time, in 2013,” according to an unsourced report.
■LABOR
Unionists paralyze exports
Staff from Ivory Coast’s coffee and cocoa marketing body BCC have launched an unlimited strike over back pay that is paralyzing exports, an official for the BCC said on Friday. “The unionists have ransacked” the hall dealing with export operations, leading to a “paralysis” in the coffee-cocoa trade, senior BCC official Kouassi Konan said. Konan said the strike had no connection with an ongoing corruption probe that has implicated many top BCC executives.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
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