TECHNOLOGY
Terry Gou in ‘animal’ spat
Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn (富士康) has apologized over comments by chief Terry Gou (郭台銘) reportedly comparing workers to animals, a report said yesterday. Gou drew criticism on online news forums and discussion sites after he was quoted by Taiwanese media as saying “I have a headache how to manage 1 million animals” at the company’s year-end party at Taipei Zoo earlier this month. Foxconn, the world’s largest maker of computer components, employs about 1 million workers in China. The company issued a statement over the weekend to apologize to “anyone who feels offended.” “Gou is aware that the media reports are misleading and offensive and he apologizes to anyone who feels offended. However, Gou did not deliberately slander the workers as some media described,” the Taipei-based Now News Web site quoted Foxconn as saying.
MANUFACTURING
Hitachi to stop making TVs
Japanese high-tech giant Hitachi said yesterday it will stop making televisions by the end of September as intense price competition hurts TV earnings at many electronics manufacturers worldwide. Hitachi will “terminate television production by the end of September” in Japan, said Sayori Nishino, a company spokeswoman, having already outsourced overseas TV manufacturing to foreign firms in 2009. However, it will still sell televisions branded with its “Wooo” logo made by contractors. Ratings agency Moody’s last week downgraded both Sony and Panasonic, citing losses in the two firms’ TV divisions, among other factors.
AVIATION
Possible Tan sale hailed
The possible sale of billionaire Lucio Tan’s (陳永裁) stake in Philippine Air Inc, is a “welcome” development that may bolster investments and improve services of the nation’s biggest carrier, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III’s spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, told reporters in Manila yesterday. “It would mean additional investments to the country,” Lacierda said. The investment would help improve “the branding of our national carrier,” he said. Tan said on Friday last week he may sell a stake in the airline at the “right price.” Philippine Airlines cut jobs last year when it outsourced catering and other ground services.
MINING
BHP to expand harbor
BHP Billiton Ltd, the world’s largest mining company, received conditional approval for a A$14 billion (US$14.7 billion) expansion of its iron ore export harbor in Western Australia to boost supply to steel mills. The spending on Port Hedland harbor, which includes rail, ore stockpiles and a 4km jetty, will add capacity of 240 million tonnes a year, the Western Australian Environmental Protection Authority said in a statement yesterday. The cost estimate comes from a report last year by the state’s Department of Mines and Petroleum.
ENERGY
Sinopec to raise LNG stake
China Petrochemical Corp (中國石化), Asia’s biggest refiner, agreed to pay US$1.1 billion to increase its stake in an Australian liquefied natural gas (LNG) development led by ConocoPhillips and Origin Energy Ltd. Sinopec Group, as the company is called, signed a binding accord to boost its holding in the Australia-Pacific LNG venture to 25 percent from 15 percent, Sydney-based Origin said in a statement yesterday. The state-owned Chinese company will buy a further 3.3 million tonnes of LNG annually for 20 years, taking its total commitment to 7.6 million tonnes a year.
INVESTMENT
UK firms splash dividends
British companies handed out record dividends last year and will pay 11 percent more this year, with mobile phone group Vodafone expected to deliver the most generous payout. UK dividends totalled £67.8 billion (US$105 billion) last year, a rise of 19.4 percent over 2010, helped by a huge payout by BP and a slew of special sums, a report by share registration company Capita Registrars said yesterday. Dividends rose last year for the first time since 2008 as the number of companies starting or increasing payments outnumbered those cutting them by four to one, with financials the biggest payers and miners the fastest-growing sector.
FRANCE
Business confidence drops
French business confidence unexpectedly fell, providing the latest sign that Europe’s second-largest economy is mired in recession. A gauge of sentiment among factory managers fell to 91 from 94 last month, national statistics office Insee said yesterday in Paris. The decline lends weight to forecasts suggesting that France has entered its second recession in three years. The French economy probably shrank 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter and may shrink another 0.1 percent in the first quarter, before expanding 0.1 percent in the second quarter of this year, Insee predicted on Dec. 16.
SHIPPING
Panama Canal strike settled
A company expanding the Panama Canal has settled a strike by 6,000 workers that had paralyzed work for six days. The multinational consortium Grupo Unidos por el Canal said in a news release that the workers have agreed to a 13 percent wage increase and were to return to work yesterday. Union representative Saul Mendez said workers are not completely happy with the deal raising hourly pay to about US$3.34 an hour, but still made important advances. The workers had been seeking a pay raise to as much as US$10 an hour.
AUTOMAKERS
VW may complete takeover
Volkswagen AG (VW) may this year complete the purchase of the 50.1 percent of Porsche SE’s automotive business that it does not already own for 3.9 billion euros (US$5 billion), Der Spiegel said, citing unidentified VW managers. VW will get around having to pay more than 1 billion euros in taxes if completing the purchase before 2014 by setting up a holding company to temporarily take control of the stake, Der Spiegel reported. Volkswagen will also take steps to ensure Porsche’s independence within the VW group to get over resistance from Porsche labor leaders, the magazine said. VW already owns 49.9 percent of Porsche’s automotive unit.
AVIATION
Conviasa eyes Embraer jets
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said his government plans to buy new Embraer jets from Brazil as well as used Airbus planes to expand his country’s state airline, Conviasa. Chavez said he approved a plan to negotiate credit with the Brazilian Development Bank to buy up to 20 Embraer jets. Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez says Venezuela has the option of buying either 10 or 20 jets from Embraer for the state airline. Chavez says the estimated cost for 20 of the jets would be US$814 million. He also said during his weekly TV and radio program on Sunday that Venezuela will buy four used Airbus jets from an airline in the United Arab Emirates at about US$60 million per plane.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day