■AVIATION
Shareholders back merger
Continental Airlines and United Airlines shareholders voted overwhelmingly to merge on Friday, paving the way for the creation of the world’s biggest airline. The firms announced an all-stock merger of equals on May 3 which is expected to close by Oct. 1. The new airline will serve more than 144 million passengers per year with 370 destinations in 59 countries.
■INTERNET
SouFun soars on debut
Shares of SouFun Holdings Ltd (搜房控股) leaped more than 70 percent during their US market debut on Friday, well ahead of the price the Chinese real estate Web site operator set for its initial public offering. The Beijing-based company’s American Depositary shares rose to US$73.21 in afternoon trading after being priced a day earlier at US$42.50 each.
■ECONOMY
IMF reaches funding deal
The IMF announced on Friday it had reached a deal with authorities in Japan, Britain, France and China to provide US$8 billion worth of funding to low-income countries. “The agreements ... expand the IMF’s capacity to help low-income countries hit hard by the current global crisis,” the Washington-based body said.
■BANKING
Bank closures continue
Georgia’s Community & Southern Bank picked up US$800 million in deposits as it acquired three of the six US banks that collapsed this week, bringing the year’s failure count to 125. Banks in Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin were closed by regulators, according to statements posted on Friday on the Web site of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which was named receiver. This week’s failures cost the agency’s deposit-insurance fund US$347.6 million. US regulators closed 140 banks last year.
■TELECOMS
Bharti Airtel, IBM ink deal
India’s top mobile phone firm Bharti Airtel said on Friday it had chosen US computer giant IBM to supply information technology services to drive the modernization of its new African networks. Under the agreement, IBM will manage the computing technology, customer and other services underpinning Bharti Airtel’s mobile communications network spanning 16 African countries including Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. Bharti gave no financial details.
■AUTOMOBILES
Toyota settles lawsuit
A report says Toyota Motor Corp has settled a lawsuit brought by relatives of four family members killed in a high-speed crash near San Diego that galvanized attention around safety flaws in the firm’s vehicles and led to the recalls of millions of cars. The Los Angeles Times said on Friday that Toyota revealed the settlement in a letter to a US Superior Court judge, gave no details about the terms.
■BANKING
Citi leaves student loans
Citigroup Inc said on Friday it is selling its student loan business and about US$32 billion in related assets to Discover Financial Services and the student lender Sallie Mae, Citi’s latest move to focus on its core consumer banking business. The company has been looking for a buyer for its 80 percent stake in the Student Loan Corp for some time as it refocuses it operations. Citigroup said on Friday it will take a loss of about US$500 million on the deal in this year’s third quarter.
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