CURRENCIES
India mulls intervention
India may intervene in the foreign exchange market if capital flows “disrupt” the economy, central bank governor, Duvvuri Subbarao, said after the rupee rallied to be Asia’s best performer of the past month. “If the inflows are lumpy and volatile or if they disrupt the macroeconomic situation, we will do so,” Subbarao said in a panel discussion at the IMF in Washington on Saturday. The rupee gained 4.5 percent against the US dollar over the past month as global funds pumped a record US$21 billion into Indian stocks this year on optimism about the South Asian’s nation’s growth prospects.
AUTOMOBILES
Mercedes models recalled
German luxury car maker Daimler will recall about 85,000 Mercedes-Benz C and E-class vehicles in the US to fix a problem with power steering systems, the US traffic authority NHTSA said yesterday. A problem with the system’s pump could lead to a loss of fluid and “owners may not have sufficient control of the vehicle in areas, such as parking lots, where maximum power steering is required, increasing the risk of a vehicle crash,” the body said on its Web site. Mercedes planned to fix the problem in models for this year and next by re-tightening a faulty fitting free of charge, it added.
AVIATION
EasyJet reaches brand deal
Budget airliner easyJet reached an agreement with its founder and largest shareholder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, allowing the no-frills carrier to keep using the Stelios-owned brand name, ending a two-year dispute. The deal also ends Haji-Ioannou’s right to appoint himself as chairman of easyJet’s board and will give the company more freedom to use the name and enter co-branding agreements with other companies. “It is definitely a benefit for us to have that clarity and the freedom to develop our ancillary revenues as we choose ... What we’ve got clarity on is the area of air travel and passenger air travel,” easyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall told reporters.
AVIATION
Costly glitch at Virgin Blue
A computer glitch that shut down check-in services for Australia’s Virgin Blue last month, stranding thousands, cost the airline up to A$20 million (US$19.7 million), the company said yesterday. The carrier’s national reservations, check-in and boarding systems crashed on Sept. 26, forcing it to cancel dozens of weekend flights and severely interrupting its business for 11 days. An initial assessment of this interruption shows an estimated pre-tax profit impact of A$15 million to A$20 million, Virgin Blue, Australia’s second-biggest airline, said in a statement. The company said it would be “actively pursuing all avenues” to recover the costs related to the outage.
FINANCE
Russia plans euro bond sale
Russia is planning its first ever sale of bonds in euros to revive corporate borrowing in the currency as yields tumble relative to US dollar debt. The government, which raised US$5.5 billion in its first global bond sale since 1998 in April, may seek a similar amount in euros to set a benchmark rate for companies, Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin told reporters in Washington on Friday. While emerging-market issuers from Morocco’s government to Mexico City-based America Movil SAB raised a record 30 billion euros (US$42 billion) this year, sales in the European currency from Russia tumbled 99 percent to 50 million euros since 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is