MACROECONOMICS
Cyprus passes bad debt bill
The Cypriot parliament on Saturday adopted a controversial bill to streamline bank foreclosures of bad debts, clearing the way for international lenders to release the next tranche of a 10 billion euro (US$13 billion) loan. The emergency vote came a day after a deadline set by the so-called troika of lenders who said that the next tranche, 436 million euros, would be withheld unless the bill was passed. The new law ensures that foreclosures cannot be indefinitely delayed, reducing the process from years to months. it also establishes procedures for valuing and auctioning properties. It allows borrowers to appeal estimated property values and obliges banks to try to restructure loans before seeking repossession of homes, while also preventing banks from arbitrarily upping the lending rate.
TRADE
Wang Yi visits Australia
Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop welcomed Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) to Sydney yesterday. Australia is hosting Wang for the second annual Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue, which comes ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit in November for the G20 summit in Brisbane. “China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner. We are on track to sign a free-trade agreement with China later this year which will further strengthen this relationship,” Bishop said at a news conference with Wang. The trade talks began in 2005, but stalled last year over agriculture and Beijing’s insistence on removing investment limits for state-owned enterprises. Over the past year Australia has signed free-trade agreements with Japan and South Korea. The bilateral talks follow Australia’s push to forge closer ties with Japan.
INTERNET
Check Point shares jump
With each successive data breach scare that has hit US-based corporations in recent weeks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co, Apple Inc and Home Depot Inc, the stock of an Israeli cyber-security giant has bounced higher. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, the world’s second-largest network security company, reached a 13-year high of US$71.99 on Friday as investors anticipated that the spate of cyberattacks would fuel demand for its services. The stock climbed 1.4 percent last week, extending its four-week rally in New York trading to 9.4 percent. While smaller rivals like Palo Alto Networks Inc and FireEye Inc focus more specifically on the kind of data security used to prevent the recent attacks, Check Point has positioned itself to tap into the uptick in this business too. Companies’ focus on improving cybersecurity has been building since Target Corp in December last year suffered the biggest retail hack in US history.
AVIATION
Bombardier resumes tests
Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier Aerospace on Friday announced it is set to resume flight tests of its CSeries airplanes this month after they were interrupted following a May 29 engine failure. The company said engine maker Pratt & Whitney Canada has fixed the problem with changes to the engine’s oil lubrication system, allowing the flight tests to go ahead. The exact nature of the engine problem has not been disclosed by the company. “In spite of the flight test program pause, we are still confident that entry-into-service will take place in the second half of 2015,” Bombardier vice president Ron Dewar said. The aircraft’s entry into commercial service has already been delayed by more than a year.
WASHINGTON’S INCENTIVES: The CHIPS Act set aside US$39 billion in direct grants to persuade the world’s top semiconductor companies to make chips on US soil The US plans to award more than US$6 billion to Samsung Electronics Co, helping the chipmaker expand beyond a project in Texas it has already announced, people familiar with the matter said. The money from the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act would be one of several major awards that the US Department of Commerce is expected to announce in the coming weeks, including a grant of more than US$5 billion to Samsung’s rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), people familiar with the plans said. The people spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the official announcements. The federal funding for
HIGH DEMAND: The firm has strong capabilities of providing key components including liquid cooling technology needed for AI servers, chairman Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday revised its revenue outlook for this year to “significant” growth from a “neutral” view forecast five months ago, due to strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers from cloud service providers. Hon Hai, a major assembler of iPhones that is also known as Foxconn, expects AI server revenues to soar more than 40 percent annually this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) told investors. The robust growth would uplift revenue contribution from AI servers to 40 percent of the company’s overall server revenue this year, from 30 percent last year, Liu said. In the three-year period
LONG HAUL: Largan Energy Materials’ TNO-based lithium-ion batteries are expected to charge in five minutes and last about 20 years, far surpassing conventional technology Largan Precision Co (大立光) has formed a joint venture with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI, 工研院) to produce fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, mobile electronics and electric storage units, the camera lens supplier for Apple Inc’s iPhones said yesterday. Largan Energy Materials Co (萬溢能源材料), established in January, is developing high-energy, fast-charging, long-life lithium-ion batteries using titanium niobium oxide (TNO) anodes, it said. TNO-based batteries can be fully charged in five minutes and have a lifespan of 20 years, a major advantage over the two to four hours of charging time needed for conventional graphite-anode-based batteries, Largan said in a
Taiwan is one of the first countries to benefit from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but because that is largely down to a single company it also represents a risk, former Google Taiwan managing director Chien Lee-feng (簡立峰) said at an AI forum in Taipei yesterday. Speaking at the forum on how generative AI can generate possibilities for all walks of life, Chien said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) — currently among the world’s 10 most-valuable companies due to continued optimism about AI — ensures Taiwan is one of the economies to benefit most from AI. “This is because AI is