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.
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
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
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],”