AUTOMAKERS
Honda recalls vehicles
Honda Motor Co said yesterday it would recall about 1.35 million Fit subcompacts globally to repair defective wiring in the headlights. No accident was reported from the defect, a Honda spokesman in Tokyo said. Subject to the recall are Fit cars built at Honda’s Suzuka factory in Japan between November 2001 and October 2007. About 735,000 units will be recalled in Japan. Honda will also recall 143,000 Fits exported to the US, and 385,000 units in Europe, where the model is called the Jazz. The car will also be recalled in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
JAPAN
Corporate tax cut
The Cabinet has approved cutting the corporate tax by 5 percentage points in a bid to spur the country’s sluggish economy. The corporate tax cut is part of tax reforms approved by the Cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan yesterday that still require parliamentary approval. The corporate tax rate currently stands at 40 percent. Companies have long urged the government to slash the rate, which is higher than the global average of 25 percent to 30 percent, the government said.
INDIA
Interest rates unchanged
The central bank yesterday kept its key short-term interest rates unchanged, but warned of the need for “continued vigilance” to curb inflation. After six increases since March, the Reserve Bank of India opted against a further hike, keeping the repo rate on loans to banks at 6.25 percent and the reverse repo it pays to banks for deposits at 5.25 percent. The annual inflation rate cooled to 7.48 percent last month, its lowest level this year, but is still above the bank’s tolerance level of around 5.5 percent for the current year.
FOOD
McDonald’s expands in China
US fast food giant McDonald’s Corp is planning its biggest expansion yet in China by opening up to 200 new restaurants across the country next year. McDonald’s said it planned to increase its capital spending in China 40 percent next year, but declined to give the value of the planned investment, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The company said it also plans to remodel 80 percent of its existing restaurants, changing the red and yellow decor to a more relaxed, European-style bistro design.
INTERENT
EBay acquires Critical Path
Online auction house eBay on Wednesday announced it has bought mobile gadget application maker Critical Path Software as it follows buyers and sellers onto smartphones and other devices. Critical Path has worked with California-based eBay on applications that let smartphone users connect with the online auction house as well as its other services such as classified ads; ticket marketplace StubHub, and Shopping.com.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
FINANCE
Lehman payment plan filed
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc bondholders filed a rival plan with a US bankruptcy court in Manhattan, to parcel out the bank’s estimated US$58 billion in assets in the largest ever US bankruptcy reorganization. Hedge fund Paulson & Co, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and other bondholders that filed the plan on Wednesday said the reorganization proposal offered by Lehman in March favored large banks. The bondholder plan, would combine the claims and assets of Lehman’s various units and pay creditors from a single pool.
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