BANKING
Flight MH17 cards stolen
Dutch banks said on Saturday they were taking “preventative measures” after reports of credit cards being looted from the Ukrainian crash site of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, where 192 Dutch citizens died. “International media report that victims’ bank cards have been stolen,” the Dutch Banking Association said in a statement “Banks are taking preventative measures as necessary,” it said, adding that any losses suffered by relatives of the dead would be paid back. Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 came down in rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Thursday with 298 people on board. The area has been under the control of Russian-backed separatists since the crash, preventing international investigators from gaining access.
FINANCE
American Apparel survives
American Apparel took another step away from a financial precipice this week when an investment firm bought a US$10 million loan that had threatened to set off a string of defaults. The loan, made by the British private equity firm Lion Capital, included a provision that said the loan would be in default if American Apparel’s founder, Dov Charney, was no longer its chief executive. That loan was then tied to another, larger line of credit with Capital One, meaning that if the Lion loan was in default, the Capital One loan could soon be as well. Charney was forced out of the chief executive position by American Apparel’s board of directors last month. Since then, American Apparel and Lion Capital have been involved in an unusually public battle over the future of the loan, which carries an interest rate of 20 percent.
MANUFACTURING
GE plans Puerto Rico plants
General Electric Co plans to open an estimated US$20 million plant along Puerto Rico’s north coast while closing two other plants in the US territory. Puerto Rico’s Industrial Development Company says construction is set to begin this year on the facility to produce molded case circuit breakers. The plant is expected to start operating in the middle of next year. The company said on Friday it would phase out operations at its plants in San German and Vega Baja by the end of next year. Information on how the changes would affect jobs was not announced. The US territory of 3.67 million people is seeking to create more jobs and expand its manufacturing sector as it struggles to emerge from a nearly decade-long economic slump. Its 13.1 percent unemployment rate is far higher than that of any US state.
PUBLIC RELATIONS
Apple talks to Jay Carney
Apple Inc has talked with former White House press secretary Jay Carney about a public-relations job, a friend of his said. Carney declined to specify whether he’s talking to Apple or any other specific company. “I am talking to a lot of different people about a variety of potential opportunities,” he said yesterday in an e-mail. Apple has been seeking a successor to Katie Cotton, the company’s longtime vice president for worldwide communications, who announced her departure in May. Carney, 49, would give the maker of the iPhone a high-profile public face. A former Washington bureau chief for Time magazine, Carney joined US President Barack Obama’s administration as the first communications director for Vice President Joe Biden. He took over the briefing-room podium when Robert Gibbs resigned as press secretary in February 2011. He left the job last month and was succeeded by Josh Earnest.
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],”
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
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