■ELECTRONICS
Hon Hai to sell bonds
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) plans to auction NT$6.82 billion (US$209 million) in five-year bonds on Wednesday, the Chinese-language Commercial Times said yesterday, citing an unidentified executive at a securities company. Hon Hai, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, will become the first Taiwanese electronics firm to sell bonds this year, the newspaper said.
■AVIATION
CAL to add cargo service
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空), Taiwan’s largest carrier, plans to resume service of a grounded cargo plane next month because of improving demand for freight services, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information. CAL grounded three Boeing Co 747 freighters in the first half of the year because of the slump in the global cargo market, with one of the planes already back in service, the newspaper said. CAL is using 90 percent of its cargo capacity for routes to the US and Europe on recovering demand for Asia-made goods, the newspaper said.
■ELECTRONICS
UMC offers lower prices
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) is offering prices lower than those of rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to grab market share, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News said, quoting an unidentified official at a chip designer. UMC is selling products using advanced 65-nanometer technology at US$4,500 per wafer, 10 percent lower than TSMC’s price, the newspaper said.
■MEDIA
Bloomberg eyes magazine
Financial news agency Bloomberg is considering a bid for BusinessWeek magazine, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said on Friday. The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said other potential bidders include Bruce Wasserstein, CEO of investment bank Lazard Ltd, and private equity firms OpenGate Capital and Platinum Equity. The WSJ said bids for the magazine are due next week.
■AUTOMOBILES
Volkswagen expanding
German carmaker Volkswagen AG said on Friday it wanted to spend 4 billion euros (US$5.8 billion) in China between now and 2011 on new products and plant expansions to cope with rising demand. This includes increasing capacity at its Nanjing and Chengdu plants, where it hopes to produce two new models starting in 2012. Volkswagen said the move would be financed through existing cash flow from the region.
■INTERNET
Twitter may open up to ads
Twitter, the micro-blogging platform which has attracted tens of millions of users but has yet to make money, has changed its terms to potentially open up the free service to advertisers. “In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in a blog post on Thursday. “We’d like to keep our options open as we’ve said before.”
■BANKING
Regulators sell Corus Bank
US regulators seized Corus Bank on Friday in the fourth-largest bank failure this year and sold its deposits to MB Financial Bank. Long controlled by the Glickman family, Chicago-based Corus Bank crumbled under the pressure of bad loans on commercial real estate and condominium developments in Arizona, southern California, southern Florida and Nevada.
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