UNITED KINGDOM
PM warns on budget veto
British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to veto the EU budget, telling the Sunday Telegraph newspaper he would not stand for “outrageous” attempts to hike it up. As his Conservative Party’s annual conference was about to get underway in Birmingham, Cameron said he would block the budget if it was not in Britain’s interest. He said he would stand up to “outrageous” attempts to increase the EU’s overall budget in upcoming negotiations to set total spending for 2014 to 2020. Cameron also floated a “bold thinking” plan for the 27-member bloc to have two separate budgets — one for the 17 nations using the euro currency and another for the other 10, Britain included.
AVIATION
US reports on documents
The US government said on Saturday it had received EU documents on funding for the Airbus A350 after requesting them from the WTO over a month ago in an ongoing transatlantic dispute over aircraft subsidies. It is the first time the funding of Europe’s answer to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, due to make its maiden flight next year, has been drawn directly into the world’s largest trade dispute, but it remains to be seen how the WTO will act on the data. Both sides are pressing for major trade sanctions after the WTO found that Airbus and US rival Boeing had benefited from billions of dollars of unfair subsidies in a pair of trade complaints now in their ninth year. Washington has called on Airbus to stop receiving loans from its host European nations — Britain, France, Germany and Spain — and argues that the WTO should take loans for the A350 into account when evaluating penalties for earlier support.
JAPAN
Regulators probe firms
Financial regulators are investigating three companies over their involvement in a scandal in which AIJ Investment Advisors Co allegedly defrauded pension funds, the Nikkei Shimbun reported yesterday. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is probing Societe Generale SA, Stats Investment Management Co and United Investments Co, the Nikkei reported, without saying where it obtained its information. The Financial Services Agency may impose administrative punishment on the three companies, it said, without giving details. AIJ president Kazuhiko Asakawa was arrested in June on suspicion of defrauding pension funds of about ¥7 billion (US$89 million). The commission found the firm lost ¥109.2 billion from derivatives trades directed by Asakawa over nine years, in a scandal that has raised concerns about the safety of retirement assets in the world’s fastest-aging nation.
TELECOMS
Qatari firm to raise stake
Qatar’s telecoms giant Qtel announced yesterday its majority stake in Kuwait’s Wataniya mobile firm will be raised to 92.1 percent in a deal worth US$1.85 billion, the company said in a statement. Qtel said it has received the acceptance of shareholders owning about 200 million shares representing 39.61 percent of Wataniya at a price of 2.6 dinars (US$9.25) at the close of a tender offer on Thursday. The Qatari firm had purchased about 52.5 percent of Wataniya about five years ago in a deal worth US$4 billion. The new purchase includes 23.5 percent of shares held by Kuwait Investment Authority or the oil-rich Gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund which is managing Kuwaiti overseas investments estimated at US$400 billion.
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
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by