Billionaire investor George Soros said US taxpayers were entitled to resent bankers’ bonuses because their profits were funded by government bailouts, according to an interview published in the Financial Times.
“Those earnings are not the achievement of risk-takers. These are gifts, hidden gifts, from the government, so I don’t think that those monies should be used to pay bonuses,” the paper quoted him as saying in yesterday’s edition. “There’s a resentment which I think is justified.”
The US government committed hundreds of billions of dollars to bailing out financial firms, some of which have since reported surging profits.
Soros said there was a need to regulate payments to employees, even if that meant banks found it difficult to retain talented risk-takers.
“That would push the risk-takers who are good at taking risks out of Goldman Sachs into hedge funds, where they actually belong, because hedge funds take risks with their own capital, not with deposits and not with government guarantees,” he said.
Meanwhile, American International Group Inc (AIG), the insurer bailed out by the US government, approved the payment of US$2.6 million in previously disclosed retention bonuses to two top executives.
Chief financial officer David Herzog will receive US$1 million and Kristian Moor, the chief executive officer of AIG’s Chartis property casualty division, will get US$1.6 million, the New York-based company said in a regulatory filing on Friday.
AIG authorized the payments after Kenneth Feinberg, the pay master in US President Barack Obama’s administration, released his review of the insurer’s proposals on executive pay. Feinberg has the power to limit some pay for top managers at AIG after the company took a US rescue valued at US$182.3 billion.
Feinberg said he determined the pay to Herzog, Moor and another unnamed executive wouldn’t be cut because of “the need to retain the services of these three employees who are deemed to be particularly critical to AIG’s long-term financial success,” though he “considered” the awards in determining cuts to their salaries this year.
The delayed payments, authorized by AIG’s board yesterday, total US$12.1 million for all managers classified in the filing as executive officers.
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
CUSTOMERS’ BURDEN: TSMC already has operations in the US and is a foundry, so any tariff increase would mostly affect US customers, not the company, the minister said Taiwanese manufacturers are “not afraid” of US tariffs, but are concerned about being affected more heavily than regional economic competitors Japan and South Korea, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said. “Taiwan has many advantages that other countries do not have, the most notable of which is its semiconductor ecosystem,” Kuo said. The US “must rely on Taiwan” to boost its microchip manufacturing capacities, Kuo said in an interview ahead of his one-year anniversary in office tomorrow. Taiwan has submitted a position paper under Section 232 of the US Trade Expansion Act to explain the “complementary relationship” between Taiwan and the US
RSS