■INSURANCE
Nan Shan customers flee
American International Group’s (AIG) Taiwanese life insurance unit said customers terminated about NT$20 million (US$624,025) in policies this week after the New York-based company agreed to give up a 79.9 percent stake in return for a bailout. The unit is operating as normal, April Pan (潘玲嬌), a spokeswoman at Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽), 95 percent owned by AIG, said yesterday. Nan Shan’s premium income was NT$255.7 billion for the fiscal year ended on Nov. 30, last year, Pan said. Nan Shan has total assets of NT$1.5 trillion, 23 branches and more than 380 agency offices as of the end of July, according to the company’s Web site.
■FINANCE
Lehman fallout limited
China Construction Bank (中國建設銀行), one of the country’s four largest banks, revealed it has a US$191.4 million exposure to Lehman Brothers and said it was not expected to have a “significant impact.” In a statement on its Web site on Friday, the Chinese bank announced that it and its subsidiaries held US$141.4 million in senior bonds from the collapsed US investment bank and US$50 million in subordinated bonds. The bonds represented 0.019 percent of the net assets of the banking group, it said. “It is expected that the Lehman Brothers event will not have any significant impact on the financial position of the bank,” the bank said.
■COMPUTERS
Apple recalls adapters
Apple said on Friday it would replace power adapters sold with its popular iPhone 3G mobile telephones because of a risk prongs could snap and cause people to be jolted by electricity. “We have received reports of detached blades involving a very small percentage of the adapters sold, but no injuries have been reported,” the California company said on a Web page providing adapter exchange details. The part Apple is offering to replace is an “Ultracompact USB power adapter” reportedly included with iPhone 3G models sold in Japan, Canada, Mexico, the US and a half dozen South American countries. Instructions for getting Apple adapters replaced were online at www.apple.com.
■ELECTRONICS
Philips to boost margins
Royal Philips Electronics NV, Europe’s largest maker of consumer electronics, plans to boost margins by ending losses at the television unit and raising prices, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Gerard Kleisterlee said. The “overarching” goal is to more than double earnings before interest, tax and amortization per share by 2010, the CEO said in an interview at Philips headquarters in Amsterdam. “The primary goal is doubling Ebita per share and all the other elements are means to an end,” Kleisterlee said.
■ENERGY
Venezuela inks gas accords
Venezuela signed accords with private companies from more than a half-dozen countries on Friday, launching a major push into natural gas projects that are expected to bring some US$19.6 billion in joint investment. State oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA signed eight agreements to develop offshore natural gas deposits with US-based Chevron Corp, Russia’s Gazprom, Italy’s Eni SpA, Portugal’s GALP Energia, Qatar Petroleum, Malasyia’s Petronas, Argentina’s Enarsa and the Japanese companies Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Itochu Corp. Officials expect joint investment over the next eight years to hit some US$19.6 billion, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
NO SHORTCUTS: Asked about Elon Musk’s Terafab initiative, TSMC CEO C.C. Wei said it takes two to three years to build a fab and another one to two to ramp it up Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its revenue growth forecast for this year to above 30 percent, up from the 25 percent it estimated three months earlier, citing extremely robust artificial intelligence (AI)-related chip demand. “Our customers and customers’ customers, who are mainly cloud service providers, continue to send us very positive signals and outlook,” TSMC chairman and CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at an earnings conference. The company also hiked its capital expenditure for this year toward the higher end of its forecast, or US$56 billion, as it aims to step up advanced chip capacity expansions, such as
The founder of Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery, a court said yesterday, the latest blow for what was once the country’s leading developer. Evergrande’s rise was propelled by decades of rapid urbanization and rising living standards, but in 2020, its access to credit dramatically narrowed when the government introduced curbs on excessive borrowing and speculation. The company defaulted in 2021 after struggling to repay creditors. Founder Xu Jiayin (許家印), 67, known as Hui Ka Yan in Cantonese, was reportedly held by police in 2023, with Evergrande saying he had been subjected to
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