FINANCE
Geithner to visit China
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is traveling to China this week for meetings with Chinese officials and to attend an international financial conference. The US Treasury Department said that Geithner would be in Nanjing, China, on Thursday for meetings with senior Chinese officials. They will discuss the global economic outlook and prepare for high-level US-China talks on economic and foreign policy concerns, scheduled to take place in Washington later this year. While in Nanjing, Geithner will attend a seminar with finance officials from other countries to review the functioning of the international monetary system.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Melanoma drug approved
The first drug to help patients with advanced melanoma live longer won US approval on Friday, a major step in the fight against one of the deadliest types of cancer. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co shares rose 3.2 percent to close at US$27.29 after the Food and Drug Administration approved its drug under the brand name Yervoy for patients in the late stages of the disease. Analysts see sales reaching US$820 million in 2015. Advanced melanoma can quickly spread from the skin to internal organs, such as the brain. Once it spreads, survival is typically six to nine months.
AIRLINES
PAL to outsource services
National flag-carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL) has won government approval to hive off some units to cut costs, but the staff must get higher severance pay, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III’s chief aide said yesterday. The government ruling gives the struggling company a free hand to farm out its in-flight catering, airport services and call center reservations to other companies, to cut its long-terms costs. However the government also ordered the airline to pay a severance pay equivalent to 125 percent of the affected employees’ monthly salaries for each month they were employed, up from the 25 percent that the airline had originally offered.
INDIA
Aviation official arrested
Police say an official at the country’s federal aviation authority has been arrested in a widening investigation of corruption in awarding flying licenses to airline pilots. Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said yesterday the official, a pilot and two other men arrested in New Delhi were involved with a flying school that issued fake certificates of training flights to its students. Four airline pilots had been arrested in the past two weeks for having fake certificates that allowed them to get licenses. The country’s aviation industry has grown rapidly and airlines have struggled to train enough qualified pilots for the jobs.
ROMANIA
IMF approves loan
A Romanian official says the IMF board has approved the country’s request for a new loan agreement. Mihai Tanasescu, Romania’s IMF representative, said on Friday the board has also approved the last evaluation of the existing loan agreement, which ends this spring, the national news agency Agerpres reports. In 2009, Romania took a two-year 20 billion euro (US$28 billion) loan from the IMF, the EU and the World Bank, as its economy shrank by 7.1 percent. Romania imposed harsh austerity measures under the agreement. The new accord will be precautionary, allowing Romania to access 3.6 billion euros (US$5.1 billion) from the IMF and 1.4 billion euros (US$2 billion) from the EU only in emergency situations.
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
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San