■ENERGY
Eurus to build solar plant
Tokyo Electric Power Co will build a solar power plant in the US state of California through its subsidiary Eurus Energy Holdings Corp, a report said yesterday. It plans to begin operations at the 1,000 kilowatt plant by next year on a site to be selected, the Nikkei Shimbun business daily reported. Eurus, already engaged in wind power generation in the US, wants to take advantage of incentives expected to be provided by the new US government to boost solar power generation nationwide, Nikkei said. The US$787 billion US economic stimulus package passed on Tuesday earmarks US$38 billion for investments in the environmental and energy sectors.
■AUTOMOBILES
Nissan cuts US team
Nissan Motor Co is chopping its California-based advanced planning team to nine positions from 19, possibly paring its ability to create models for the US. Nissan’s cutback of the Los Angeles group follows the company’s announcement last month that it will close a design studio at its Farmington Hills, Michigan, engineering center. On Feb. 9 in Japan, the company said it would cut 20,000 jobs worldwide because of the sales slump, following plans to shed 110 US sales, marketing and design positions. Meanwhile, Mazda Motor Corp said it’s eliminating 110 jobs in the US market to remain competitive in the current environment, spokesman Jeremy Barnes said in an interview.
■INSURANCE
Prudential to help Yamato
US life insurer Prudential Financial Inc is to help restructure Yamato Life Insurance Co, the first Japanese financial firm to fall victim to the financial crisis, the Nikkei Shimbun daily reported yesterday. The financial services firm, unrelated to British insurance group Prudential Plc, has two Japanese units, Prudential Life Insurance Co and Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Tokyo-based Yamato went bankrupt in October with debts of US$2.9 billion. It was the first Japanese life insurer to fail in seven years, and only the eighth since the end of World War II.
■STEEL
Production falls by 24%
Global steel production fell by a quarter between last January and last month, but rose slightly from December because of increased output in China, the World Steel Association said on Friday. Total production last month was 86 million tonnes in the 66 countries included in the association’s survey — 24 percent lower than in the same month last year. Production rose 4.5 percent from December “mainly because of a 9.9 percent increase in Chinese production,” the group said in a statement. China’s steel production went up by 2.4 percent between last January and last month, the group said.
■BANKING
UBS cannot share data
A Swiss tribunal has barred financial regulators from handing banking information of UBS bank clients to US authorities investigating tax fraud, ATS news agency reported. Siding with a complaint from UBS clients, the tribunal on Friday issued an order forbidding Swiss bank regulator FINMA from giving the plaintiffs’ “banking documents to third parties, particularly US authorities,” ATS said. The tribunal’s decision came amid US Justice Department efforts to break through Switzerland’s banking secrecy to go after tax cheats hiding their money in the European country. UBS reached a settlement with US authorities on Wednesday in which it admitted to US tax fraud and agreed to pay US$780 million.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day