■ AVIATION
China Eastern head replaced
The chairman and president of China Eastern Airlines (中國東方航空), one of several major state-owned carriers, have been replaced as part of a government-managed shake-up of the troubled industry. Liu Shaoyong (劉紹勇), chairman of rival China Southern Airlines (中國南方航空), was appointed to replace Shanghai-based China Eastern’s chairman Li Fenghua (李豐華), the carrier said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. More recently, the airline was the subject of speculation that it might merge with local rival Shanghai Airlines (上海航空), but China Eastern denied that. The management reshuffle is expected to facilitate a merger with Shanghai Airlines, the financial magazine Caijing and other state media reports said.
■ INTERNET
Baidu cuts projection 15%
Baidu.com Inc (百度), China’s leading search engine, is cutting its projected revenues by up to 15 percent after it dropped some advertisers because of a scandal over unlicensed companies selling medical products. Fourth-quarter revenues are expected to be between 890 million yuan and 900 million yuan (US$131 million to US$133 million), down from the previously forecast 1.025 billion yuan to 1.055 billion yuan, the company said in a filing on Friday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Baidu blamed China’s economic slowdown and the removal of listings for the medical advertisers and other “questionable” advertisers.
■ ELECTRONICS
Siemens to settle charges
Industrial conglomerate Siemens AG plans to plead guilty and pay at least US$450 million in fines to settle long-standing corruption charges in the US, court papers filed on Friday said. The Justice Department has accused Siemens of making bribes and trying to falsify its corporate books from 2001 to last year. It has also accused some of the conglomerate’s subsidiaries of bribery, including paying kickbacks to the former Iraqi government to get some of the UN Oil-for Food contracts. Siemens has agreed to pay US$448.5 million in fines, with the three subsidiaries paying at least US$500,000 each, the court papers said.
■ INTERNET
Chrome completes beta test
Google officially took its Chrome browser out of its beta testing phase on Friday, signaling its ambitions to take on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Firefox’s Mozilla browsers. The Internet software giant is already believed to be negotiating with computer makers to have Chrome pre-installed on their machines, giving the Google browser a powerful leg-up in its bid to achieve parity with its more established competitors. Google only released the beta version of Chrome in September, marking an unusually fast development to official release in a move that marks the strategic value of the browser.
■ AVIATION
Delta offers severance
Delta Air Lines Inc, the world’s biggest carrier, will offer voluntary severance payouts to a majority of the 75,000 employees at Delta and Northwest’s mainline operations as part of a plan to cut an unspecified number of jobs, executives said on Friday. Chief executive Richard Anderson and president Ed Bastian said in a memo to employees that the program is similar to one earlier this year that Delta used to trim about 4,000 jobs. Northwest previously trimmed jobs of its own before being acquired by Delta on Oct. 29.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last