AVIATION
Aeromexico, union ink deal
Aeromexico, Mexico’s biggest airline, and its unionized workers forged a last-minute accord early on Saturday to avoid a strike that could have grounded about 300 flights and cost 150 million Mexican pesos (US$11.7 million) a day, but delayed a decision on a crucial sticking point. The union, known as ASSA, represents about 1,300 Aeromexico flight attendants. ASSA had threatened a midnight strike if it did not get a 5 percent salary hike and 3 percent boost in benefits. ASSA rejected an early proposal by the airline that combined a slightly smaller pay raise with “new competitive conditions” for future hires that the union said would unfairly slash their pay. In its final offer, the airline proposed to raise attendants’ salary immediately by 4.7 percent, boost benefits by 1.5 percent and set up a committee to make a decision on the prickly issue of new employee contracts by July 1.
ENERGY
Ghana ends fuel subsidies
Ghana on Saturday ended its subsidies on fuel, hiking the prices of petroleum products as the growing west African economy struggles with a skyrocketing deficit. “This adjustment completely removes the subsidies on petrol, diesel and liquid propane gas,” National Petroleum Authority chief executive Alexander Mould said in a statement. The statement said the cut would cause only a minimal increase in prices. However, the prices of petroleum products will be more susceptible to fluctuations on the international market. Gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas will go up by 3 percent, while diesel will rise by 2 percent. Ghana had been under pressure from the IMF to cut fuel subsides after its budget deficit ballooned to 12.1 percent of GDP last year, double its target for the year.
GAMBLING
Echo defends monpoly
Echo Entertainment Ltd plans to invest at least A$1 billion (US$960 million) to fend off Australian billionaire James Packer’s attempts to break the company’s Sydney casino monopoly. The operator of the city’s Star Casino and Crown Ltd, the gaming company controlled by Packer, have prepared rival proposals for developments on the shores of Sydney Harbour, with the New South Wales State Government saying it will approve only one project. Echo’s plan requires investment of more than A$1 billion, chief executive John Redmond said in a TV interview yesterday on Channel Nine’s Financial Review Sunday. “I have nothing against Crown or nothing against James Packer,” he said. “This is really an investment in Echo’s future. It should be only one casino and one city.”
BANKING
Woori Bank buyer sought
South Korea’s government aims to sell Woori Finance Holdings Co’s main banking unit by the end of next year after it failed three times to offload its 57 percent stake in the country’s biggest financial group by assets. “We will try to designate a new owner of Woori Bank” by the end of next year, South Korean Financial Services Commission Chairman Shin Je-yoon told reporters on Saturday, according to pool reports e-mailed from the agency yesterday. Authorities are open to selling Woori Finance’s units “in pieces,” he added. Seoul is reviving plans to sell its 5.5 trillion won (US$4.9 billion) stake after it received no bidders for the shares last year in its third sale attempt since 2010. The Public Fund Oversight Committee, which oversees sales of state assets, is studying all options to sell Woori Finance and will announce details by the end of this month, Shin said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the