CREDIT CARDS
Visa stops serving Crimea
International credit and debit card company Visa Inc on Friday said it could no longer support bank cards being used in Crimea, following US sanctions imposed earlier this month.
The US has prohibited US-registered companies from investing in Crimea or providing services to firms operating there, among sanctions imposed over Russia’s annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine. “We can no longer support card issuing and merchant/ATM acquiring services in Crimea,” Visa said in a statement. A spokeswoman for Visa’s competitor MasterCard was unable to immediately confirm whether it had also stopped serving bank cards in Crimea.
MEXICO
US$3.4bn taken from Pemex
The Finance Ministry took out 50 billion pesos (US$3.4 billion) from the state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), according to a statement sent to the Mexican Stock Exchange.
The payment this month was meant to “make management of public-sector finances more efficient,” according to the filing from the oil company. The withdrawal marks a departure from the government’s usual methods of obtaining revenue from Pemex, which include taxes and royalties.
During the first 11 months of the year, taxes paid by Mexico City-based Pemex declined by about 260 billion pesos, or 22 percent, from the same period of last year, according to records.
BANKING
Pheonix Light sues banks
Wells Fargo & Co, HSBC Holdings PLC, Bank of New York Mellon Corp and Deutsche Bank AG were sued by an Irish securities firm that claims the banks failed to protect investors in their role as trustees of securities backed by home loans that defaulted after the 2008 credit crisis. Phoenix Light SF Ltd accused the banks, in complaints filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court, of failing to safeguard the interests of investors as required by their contracts. The securities were sold from 2005 to 2007.
DELIVERy Services
City Link in administration
British parcel delivery company City Link has gone into administration and temporarily suspended all operations, with 2,727 jobs at risk, administrators said on Thursday. Hunter Kelly, an administrator from Ernst & Young, said undelivered parcels could be picked up at its depots from Monday and “substantial redundancies” were expected. Kelly said in a statement that the company had been hit by intense competition, changing market needs and difficulties in cost-cutting. The company had suffered “substantial losses over several years” and had “all but used up” a £40 million (US62.23 million) investment made last year, Kelly said.
PETROLEUM
US city sues Petrobas
Providence, Rhode Island, has filed suit against Petrobras and senior officers of the company over investor losses due to a corruption scandal at the Brazilian oil giant. The complaint by Providence, the largest city in Rhode Island, follows other investor suits against Petrobras in the US in the wake of a massive corruption scandal that has depressed Petrobras’ stock value. However, the Providence case, filed on Wednesday in New York by law firm Labaton Sucharow, is the first to bring allegations against key executives, including company president Graca Foster and chief financial officer Almir Barbassa, according to Brazilian newspaper O Estado.
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],”