The administration of US President Barack Obama has seized US$21 million from troubled automaker Fisker Automotive Inc just weeks after the company laid off three-fourths of its workers amid continuing financial and production problems.
Fisker had received US$192 million in federal loans, before a series of problems led US officials to freeze the loan in 2011.
In a statement on Monday, the US Department of Energy said it recovered US$21 million from the company’s reserve account on April 11 as it continues to seek repayment from the car maker for a 2009 loan commitment awarded by the Department of Energy.
A payment from Fisker was due on Monday, but was not made, a Department of Energy official said.
The payment deadline, combined with the company’s financial woes, had increased speculation that Fisker would file for bankruptcy as soon as Monday. No bankruptcy filing had occurred by late in the day.
The Department of Energy awarded the Anaheim, California-based company a US$529 million loan as part of an Obama administration program to boost electric cars and other advanced vehicles. Fisker pledged its assets as collateral on that loan.
A department spokeswoman called the financial seizure appropriate and noted that safeguards were written into the loan agreement. Combined with the 2011 action to freeze the loan, the department has protected more than two-thirds of its original loan commitment, spokeswoman Aoife McCarthy said.
“While this is a hard time for the company’s employees and investors, our overall portfolio of more than 30 projects continues to perform well and more than 90 percent of the US$10 billion loan loss reserves Congress established remains intact,” McCarthy said.
The Department of Energy has been criticized for failing to protect taxpayers from a failed US$529 million loan to solar panel maker Solyndra, which went bankrupt in 2011 and laid off 1,100 workers.
Fisker, maker of the US$100,000 Karma hybrid sports car, has not built a vehicle since last summer and has failed to secure a buyer as its cash reserves have dwindled.
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],”
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
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