AUTOMOBILES
Nissan unveils electric car
Nissan Motor Co showed a two-seater electric vehicle resembling a go-cart yesterday that isn’t ready for sale, but spotlights the Japanese automaker’s ambitions to be the leader in zero-emission cars. Nissan is planning to produce 250,000 electric vehicles a year, starting with the Leaf electric car set for delivery in Japan and the US next month, and next year in Europe. Its alliance partner Renault SA of France is planning to produce another 250,000 electric vehicles a year.
ECONOMY
Fed injection expected soon
US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is expected push ahead this week with up to US$1 trillion of quantitative easing to spur growth and cut unemployment. In a crucial week for the moribund US economy, Bernanke will override doubters and inject funds into the banking system to boost lending and improve the outlook for national income growth and jobs. Most analysts said they expected the Fed to spend about US$500 billion, although there have been suggestion the stimulus could reach US$1 trillion. This would be in addition to the US$1.7 trillion already spent, before considering further measures to boost the economy as it moves into next year.
UNITED KINGDOM
Young tapped as adviser
Prime Minister David Cameron said on yesterday he had appointed former Cabinet minister David Young as his adviser on enterprise, asking him to suggest how the government can help small businesses grow. Cameron’s coalition government has announced sharp cuts in public spending to rein in a record peacetime budget deficit. With the public sector set to shrink and lay off workers, the government is hoping the private sector can pick up the slack and keep the economic recovery going. Small and medium-sized businesses provide nearly 60 percent of the nation’s jobs and account for half the country’s economic output, Cameron said in a statement.
BANKING
Woori seeks governance
South Korea’s largest banking group Woori Finance Holdings Co needs a consortium of investors to establish a stable and independent governance structure, the head of its bank unit said yesterday. The state-run Public Fund Oversight Committee, which oversees government-held stakes, began accepting bids over the weekend for a 57 percent share, worth about US$6 billion, in Woori Finance. The agency aims to pick a preferred bidder in the first quarter of next year and complete the sale within the first half of next year. Woori Bank president Lee Chong-hwi said it would “actively” seek to establish a consortium of investors to buy the stake in its parent.
AUTOMOBILES
Indian firms post records
India’s two leading firms posted record sales last month as a strong economy brought consumers flooding into showrooms to buy new models ahead of the religious festival season. The country’s largest maker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, said sales jumped almost 40 percent from a year earlier to hit a monthly record of 118,908 units last month, a company statement said. The high sales came as India readied for the religious period that peaks this month with Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, seen as an auspicious time to make new big-ticket purchases such as cars. Maruti is majority-owned by Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp and sells about one out of every two cars in India. It racked up its previous highest sales tally of 108,006 units in September.
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