BANKING
Barclays faces £66.7m fine
Barclays PLC, the third-biggest UK bank, might have to pay as much as £66.7 million (US$106.8 million) in fines and compensation for failing to disclose the risk in two funds it sold to thousands of retirees. The bank was fined £7.7 million and might need to return as much as £59 million to customers who received bad investment advice, the UK Financial Services Authority said in a statement on Tuesday. The fine is the biggest imposed by the London-based regulator for retail deficiencies. “The [Financial Services Authority] requires firms to have robust procedures in place to ensure any advice given to customers is suitable,” Margaret Cole, the regulator’s managing director of enforcement, said in the statement. “Barclays failed to do this and thousands of investors, many of whom were seeking to invest their retirement savings, have suffered.”
AVIATION
ANA seeks assurances
Japan’s All Nippon Airways Co Ltd (ANA) said yesterday it would seek assurances from Boeing Co that it can meet the latest delivery date for the troubled 787 Dreamliner, after the US aviation giant delayed it yet again. ANA, the inaugural customer for the high-tech Dreamliner, added it was still asking Boeing to draft a full delivery schedule for all of the 55 aircraft on order. Boeing said on Tuesday the first Dreamliner would be delivered in the third quarter of this year, the latest of a series of delays from its original promise to roll out the product in 2008. ANA said it welcomed Boeing’s resumption of its flight test program as “a positive step” after a test flight in November last year was forced into an emergency landing following an electrical fire.
CREDIT RATINGS
US rating could decline
The credit rating of the US could be damaged unless a “credible plan” is approved to reduce its budget deficit, the Standard and Poor’s rating agency said on Tuesday. “Our stable outlook on the ‘AAA’ rating on the US government assumes that the government will soon reveal a credible plan to tighten fiscal policy to enable the general government debt-to-GDP ratio to stabilize and then to decline in the medium term,” the agency’s chief economist Davis Wyss wrote in a report. “Absent a credible plan, the rating on the US federal government will come under pressure.” The US government is due to present next month its proposed budget, which takes effect in the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1.
BANKING
Citi’s Q4 income falls short
Citigroup Inc reported fourth-quarter income of US$1.3 billion on Tuesday after recording fewer losses from loans, which allowed the bank to take money out of reserves. Volatility in the bond market hurt earnings at the New York bank. The results fell short of analysts’ estimates, sending Citigroup’s stock down 5.5 percent to US$4.85 in heavy trading. Other banks also fell. Citigroup earned US$0.04 per share, below the US$0.07 analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting. The results were an improvement compared with the loss of US$7.6 billion, or US$0.33 a share, reported for the same quarter of last year. Revenue was US$18.4 billion compared with US$5.4 billion a year earlier. For the year, Citigroup earned US$10.6 billion on revenue of US$86.6 billion. It’s the first full year of profits for the bank since 2007.
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
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
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
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