GREECE
Athens on credit watch list
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s on Thursday placed Greece on a credit watch as it warned proposed changes to EU rules could hurt bondholders. “We believe that assigning ‘preferred creditor’ status to future official lending ... could be detrimental to the ability of non-official holders of sovereign debt to be repaid,” the firm said. The EU plan could see governments repaid first in the event of a default or debt restructuring.
GOLD
Chinese imports soar
Gold imports into China, the world’s top bullion consumer, have soared this year as investors flock to the metal to safeguard their cash amid rising inflation, a report said yesterday. The country imported 209.7 tonnes of gold in the first 10 months of the year, up 480 percent from the same period last year, the China Business News said, citing Shen Xiangrong (沈祥榮), Shanghai Gold Exchange chairman. Individual Chinese investors purchased 973.8 tonnes of gold in the period, up 247.3 percent from a year ago and accounting for nearly 20 percent of total transactions, the report said.
TECHNOLOGY
Google to pay US$1 fine
Google has agreed to pay a Pennsylvania couple US$1 for trespassing on their property while taking photographs for its “Street View” online mapping service. Aaron and Christine Boring sued the Internet giant in 2008, seeking damages and an acknowledgment that a Google Street View car ignored a “Private Road No Trespassing” sign to take pictures of their Franklin Park home. Google admitted to trespassing and agreed to pay nominal damages of US$1 to the Borings.
TECHNOLOGY
RIM to acquire TAT
Research In Motion Ltd, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, said on its blog on Thursday that it will buy Swedish software developer The Astonishing Tribe, which specializes in making phone software more attractive and easy to use. The Astonishing Tribe, dubbed TAT for short, designs software that runs on smartphones and that lets people personalize the way the devices look. TAT said its software resides on 15 percent of all phones. It was founded in 2002 and has about 150 employees. RIM did not say how much it paid for TAT, nor when the purchase is expected to close.
INTERNET
EBay buys Milo.com
EBay Inc, owner of the second-most visited US e-commerce site, said it bought shopping engine Milo.com to help it reach more consumers looking for products in nearby stores and browsing for bargains with mobile phones. Milo.com helps consumers find items in stock at local stores and EBay will weave the technology into its existing marketplace and mobile applications, the San Jose-based company said today in a statement.
FOOD
PepsiCo expands into Russia
PepsiCo Inc is buying a majority stake in Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods for US$3.8 billion, a deal that will make it the biggest food and beverage company in Russia. The deal is Pepsi’s largest international acquisition ever. It gives the company dominant position in the fast-growing Russian market and furthers its plan to build its global nutrition business. Combined, the companies will hold six of Russia’s 20 largest food and beverage brands and will be about twice the size of its nearest competitor in the country. PepsiCo said the deal will make Russia its second-largest market behind the US.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last