SHIPPING
Hyundai to sell assets
Hyundai Group, owner of South Korea’s second-biggest shipping company, plans to raise at least 3.3 trillion won (US$3.1 billion) by selling assets to boost cash. Hyundai Group will sell Hyundai Securities Co and two other financial units to raise as much as 1 trillion won, it said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Hyundai Merchant Marine Co, the biggest shareholder of Hyundai Securities, plans to sell stakes in its terminal business and restructure bulk-carrier operations for about 1.5 trillion won. The group also expects to reap 340 billion won by selling the Banyan Tree Hotel in Seoul, it said in the statement.
INVESTMENT
Cuba to approve new law
Cuba will approve a new foreign investment law in March, Cuban President Raul Castro said on Saturday, without elaborating on specific changes. Cuba’s National Assembly will be convened “in March for a special session to handle this issue and others,” the president, 82, said at the closing session of the legislature. Foreign direct investment “is of unparalleled importance to energize the country’s social and economic development,” Castro said.
RETAIL
Fraud incidents few: Target
US retailer Target, which revealed this week that 40 million customers’ credit and debit cards may have been compromised, said on Saturday that few incidents of fraud had occurred. The popular chain store announced on Thursday that hackers broke into its payment system between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15, stealing debit and credit card data during the height of Christmas shopping. Among the information potentially pilfered was the name, card number, expiration date and three-digit security code on the back of the cards.
OUTSOURCING
Eighth Infosys exec quits
A top executive of Infosys, tipped as a future chief executive of the outsourcing giant, has resigned, the latest in a string of departures since co-founder Narayana Murthy returned to lead the company. Infosys said in a statement posted on its Web site on Saturday that V. Balakrishnan, who headed the business process outsourcing division, had quit and would leave the firm at the end of the year. It marked the eighth high-profile exit the company has seen in the past six months as Infosys undergoes an organizational restructuring, the reports said.
NUCLEAR
Urenco sale stalled
Efforts to sell Urenco Ltd have stalled as Dutch politicians argue over the future of the multinational nuclear-fuel processor, according to three people familiar with the situation. A sale of Urenco, which is owned by the governments of the UK, the Netherlands, and German utilities EON SE and RWE AG, will probably not occur until at least the second half of next year and may be delayed to 2015, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private deliberations.
SERVERS
Sales grew 1.9 percent
Worldwide server shipments grew 1.9 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of the year, but revenues declined 2.1 percent from the same quarter last year, according to Gartner Inc. “The worldwide server market remains in a relatively weak performance mode as we move through the second half of the year,” Gartner research vice president Jeffrey Hewitt said. Only Canada, the Middle East and Africa, and the US exhibited positive vendor revenue growth, Hewitt said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last