■RESOURCES
Sierra Leone, PRC ink deal
Sierra Leone’s mineral resources minister Alpha Kanu on Friday said a US$1.5 billion iron-ore agreement with a Chinese firm would create jobs and boost the economy in the resource-rich, but poor country. Speaking to reporters on a conference call from London, Kanu said the 25 percent investment by China’s Shandong Iron and Steel Group (山東鋼鐵集團) in the Tonkolili iron ore mine “would provide an added boost to impact the country’s weak economy.” Kanu said Shandong’s stake in London-listed African Minerals’ Sierra Leonean mine project would create some 2,000 jobs, increasing to about 5,000 in the next two years.
■TECHNOLOGY
Google purchases Metaweb
Search giant Google Inc says it has bought Metaweb Inc, a company that helps connect Internet search words to real-world things. Terms were not disclosed. Google director of product management, Jack Menzel, said in a blog post on Friday that the acquisition would help “improve search and make the Web richer and more meaningful.” In a video on its Web site, San Francisco-based Metaweb says search words themselves can be interpreted in too many ways to be useful. Instead, it has created an open database of more 12 million things, such as people, companies, movies and books, and how they relate to each other.
■RESOURCES
Honam acquires Titan Corp
Honam Petrochemical Corp will acquire Malaysia’s Titan Chemicals Corp in an all-cash deal valued at US$1.25 billion in South Korea’s biggest overseas acquisition this year. South Korea’s second-largest ethylene maker will buy all of Titan’s stock for 2.35 ringgit (US$0.73) a share, the Malaysian company said in a statement on Friday. That’s a 27 percent premium to Titan’s closing price of RM1.85 on Thursday. Honam will pay 1.5 trillion won (US$1.25 billion) for the purchase, the Seoul-based company said in an e-mailed statement.
■TRANSPORT
Narita-Tokyo line opens
A new high-speed railway line linking Narita International Airport with central Tokyo opened yesterday. The 64km line, Narita Sky Access, cuts the travel time between Nippori Station in Tokyo and the airport in Chiba, southeast of the capital, by 15 minutes to 36 minutes. Fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto designed the new “Skyliner” train for the service, which can run at 160km per hour.
■AUTOMOBILES
Daimler posts strong figures
German automotive giant Daimler posted strong quarterly figures on Friday on the back of soaring demand for its Mercedes cars and trucks, a weaker euro boosting exports and cost cutting measures. Daimler reported a second quarter operatng profit of 2.1 billion euros (US$2.7 billion), reversing a year-earlier loss of 1 billion euros and exceeding market expectations. The group said its sales in the three months to last month jumped to 25.1 billion euros from 19.6 billion euros a year earlier.
■BANKING
More US banks shut down
US regulators on Friday shut down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of US banks to succumb this year to the recession and mounting loan defaults. With 96 closures nationwide so far this year, the pace of bank failures far outstrips that of last year, which was already a brisk year for shutdowns. By this time last year, regulators had closed 57 banks.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by