CRIME
Latin American crime soars
Income disparity has helped fuel surging crime across Latin America, from robbery to homicide, a UN official said on Saturday. “The problem of citizens facing a lack of safety has increased in the entire region,” Heraldo Munoz, regional chief of the United Nations Development Programme, told reporters. Latin America continues to be one of the world’s most violent regions, he added, saying that homicides were up 11 percent in the past decade while thefts have tripled in 25 years. The program points to skewed incomes, coupled with judicial systems that are unable to cope with the situation, as causes of the problem.
UNITED STATES
Politician denies bribe claim
A Utah businessman accused of running a fraudulent US$350 million software scheme says the state attorney general arranged a deal to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into the software business disappear. St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson told the Salt Lake Tribune that newly elected Utah Attorney General John Swallow set up a deal in 2010 for Johnson to pay US$600,000 to people connected to Reid. Swallow denies the allegations and maintains he only offered to connect Johnson with a lobbying firm. At the time, he was serving as Utah’s chief deputy attorney general.
FINANCE
Report could implicate CEO
JPMorgan Chase & Co’s board will consider releasing an internal report this week that faults chief executive officer Jamie Dimon’s oversight of a division that lost more than US$6.2 billion on botched trades, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The findings are critical of Dimon and others for inadequately supervising traders in a UK unit that built up a large and illiquid position in credit derivatives last year, the person said. The report, which is not yet finished, will be presented to the board tomorrow. The directors will then vote on whether to release it to the public when the bank announces fourth-quarter earnings the following day, the person said, asking not to be named because the report is not yet public.
AVIATION
Tehran route to be culled
Air France-KLM says the company will cancel its flights to Iran as of April, leaving Germany’s Lufthansa as the sole European carrier offering services to Tehran. Spokesman Joost Ruempol said on Saturday the decision to end the Amsterdam-Tehran route was made for economic, not political reasons. KLM is still selling tickets daily, though the number of flights per week will be curtailed significantly later this month before halting entirely in April. As part of a review of routes, the company is also halting service to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and Khartoum in Sudan.
FINANCE
Funds buy utility firm stakes
Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund Sanabil and the nation’s pension agency acquired 19 percent of ACWA Power International, a company that invests in power and water projects in the kingdom and regionally. Riyadh-based ACWA issued 89.5 million new shares to Sanabil and the Saudi Public Pension Agency, each of which will sit on ACWA’s board of directors, the company said in an e-mailed statement on Saturday. The transaction will give Sanabil and the pension agency stakes of 13.7 percent and 5.7 percent, respectively. No financial details were given in the statement.
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
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
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure