UNITED STATES
Fed to make housing points
The Federal Reserve plans on sending Congress “legislative recommendations” next week on how to help the housing market recover, Senator Dianne Feinstein said on Thursday after a meeting with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. Democratic lawmakers, who met with Bernanke at their weekly policy luncheon, said he stressed that more needed to be done to help the housing sector, which has hindered the country’s economic recovery and forced President Barack Obama’s administration to retool foreclosure prevention programs. Bernanke also told senators the debt crisis in Greece and Europe were having an impact on the domestic economy, according Senator Richard Durbin.
GERMANY
Business confidence drops
The country’s business confidence deteriorated again this month, the Ifo economic research institute said yesterday, but the decline was not quite as steep as expected. The monthly Ifo business climate index fell to 106.4 points this month from 107.4 points last month, while economists had been penciling in a fractionally steeper decline to 106.3 points. Nevertheless, the index is still at its lowest level since June last year, when it also stood at 106.4 points.
CHINA
No rate moves soon: expert
The country is unlikely to cut interest rates or change its monetary policy stance until the pace of consumer price increases slows to less than 5 percent, said Yu Yongding (余永定), a former central bank adviser. “Inflation is under control and the inflation rate will fall,” said Yu, a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher, in Beijing yesterday. “I don’t think there will be any major changes in policy either further tightening or loosening” until cost-of-living gains decline, he said. Inflation moderated to 6.1 percent last month from a year earlier after reaching a three-year high of 6.5 percent in July. Gains in consumer prices will drop to 5.8 percent by the end of the year, Yu said. He estimated the inflation rate may be less than 5 percent next year as food and pork prices stabilize.
TELECOMS
Nokia trims Q3 losses
Nokia Corp narrowed its losses more than anticipated during the third quarter even though its smartphone sales continued to suffer in the face of stiff competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone. Finland’s biggest company reported a third-quarter net loss of 68 million euros (US$94 million). Though that’s a big reverse from last year’s equivalent profit of 529 million euros, it represented an improvement on the second quarter’s 368 million euro loss. Despite signs of encouragement, Nokia continues to suffer from heavy competition in the smartphone market. Its sales of smartphones dropped 39 percent to 2.2 billion euros, from 3.6 billion euros a year earlier, knocking overall revenue by 13 percent to 8.9 billion euros.
ELECTRONICS
HP’s Robison stepping down
Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) chief strategy officer Shane Robison is stepping down, one of the first major casualties at the technology giant under new CEO Meg Whitman. The 11-year veteran of HP will retire effective Nov. 1, the company said. Robison also was chief technology officer and a member of the company’s executive council. HP said he was instrumental in steering the company’s multibillion-dollar research and development spending and has guided many of the company’s largest acquisitions.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has appointed Rose Castanares, executive vice president of TSMC Arizona, as president of the subsidiary, which is responsible for carrying out massive investments by the Taiwanese tech giant in the US state, the company said in a statement yesterday. Castanares will succeed Brian Harrison as president of the Arizona subsidiary on Oct. 1 after the incumbent president steps down from the position with a transfer to the Arizona CEO office to serve as an advisor to TSMC Arizona’s chairman, the statement said. According to TSMC, Harrison is scheduled to retire on Dec. 31. Castanares joined TSMC in
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the