FINANCE
US sends UK trader to jail
A former top Credit Suisse trader was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on Friday in New York for inflating subprime mortgage-related bond prices during the housing market collapse. British citizen Kareem Serageldin, 40, was extradited by Great Britain to the US in April and pleaded guilty. The fraud allegedly took place between late 2007 and early 2008, as the collapsing US housing bubble sent millions of home mortgages into default and wiped off hundreds of billions of US dollars in value from mortgage-backed securities widely held by banks and other institutional investors.
ENTERTAINMENT
Duo eye Time Warner Cable
Comcast Corp and Charter Communications Inc, aiming to reshape the cable industry, have discussed a joint bid to buy Time Warner Cable Inc and divvy up its customers, people with knowledge of the matter said. Each company’s coverage area could be enhanced by adding parts of Time Warner Cable’s network, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The talks between Comcast and Charter have been preliminary, and a Time Warner Cable breakup is one option amid several under consideration, the people said. Time Warner Cable, the second-largest US cable company, is emerging as an acquisition target amid renewed attempts to consolidate the industry.
CARBON emissions
California sells permits
California, the second-largest carbon-emitting state in the US, sold 16.6 million carbon allowances at auction for US$11.48 each, roughly in line with analysts’ expectations. Units of Chevron Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley and PG&E Corp were among the companies that qualified to buy permits in the Nov. 19 auction, a report posted on the state Air Resources Board’s Web site on Friday showed. The agency does not disclose the names of winning bidders. The state received 1.82 offers for every permit put up for sale. Tehe credits, each approving the release of a metric tonne of carbon, are traded as part of the world’s second-largest carbon market, established by California last year in an effort to cut greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The auction results were “kind of right in line with expectations,” Mark Struk, senior vice president of environmental trading and advisory for Alpha Inception LLC, a Houston-based consulting firm, said by telephone.
AUTOMAKERS
Fisker files for bankruptcy
Fisker Automotive Inc, whose US$103,000 luxury hybrid car was driven by celebrities including Justin Bieber and Leonardo DiCaprio, filed for bankruptcy with plans to sell itself to Hybrid Tech Holdings LLC. The Anaheim, California-based company listed assets of as much as US$500 million and debt of as much as US$1 billion in a Chapter 11 petition filed on Friday in US Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Assets include a shuttered General Motors Co factory in Wilmington that Fisker had planned to reopen. Safety recalls, a battery supplier that went bankrupt and shipments lost to Hurricane Sandy all contributed to the company’s financial woes, Henrik Fisker, the auto designer who co-founded the company, told the US Congress in a hearing on April 24.
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
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
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
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