TAXES
Cameron to vow to raise tax
UK Prime Minister David Cameron is to pledge to raise the inheritance tax threshold for couples to £1 million (US$1.5 million) as he seeks to break the opinion poll deadlock between his Conservatives and the Labour Party. Labour on Saturday promised to crack down on tax evasion and avoidance with plans for stricter rules and steeper fines, building on a promise earlier this week to tighten rules on non-domiciled taxpayers. The measures, which include closing a “loophole used by hedge funds” to avoid a transaction tax known as stamp duty, would aim to raise £7.5 billion per year, the party said.
AUTOMAKERS
Toyota to build China plant
Toyota Motor Corp is planning to build a new plant in northern China as the world’s top automaker ramps up investment after a two-year freeze, reports said on Saturday. Proposals for the plant in Tianjin — due to open in 2018 at the earliest with a capacity of 100,000 cars per year — should be finalized by the summer, Jiji Press and Kyodo news agency reported. At the new plant, Toyota is likely to produce fuel-efficient passenger vehicles under a local brand through a joint venture with a Chinese firm, the reports said. The vehicles would meet stricter environmental regulations in China, where air pollution is a serious social problem.
BANKING
Monte exposure tops cap
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA said its exposure to Nomura Holdings Inc exceeds the 25 percent limit on total capital imposed by regulators after losses last year reduced capital levels. Monte Paschi’s exposure to Nomura was about 35 percent of its regulatory capital base at the end of last year, Italy’s third-biggest bank said in a statement on Friday. The Siena-based lender has 9.9 billion euros (US$10.5 billion) of capital, according to its annual report for last year, implying a financial exposure to the Japanese lender of about 3.5 billion euros. “The bank is reviewing all possible options to reduce the exposure within limits,” it said in the statement, following a request by market regulator Consob.
EMPLOYMENT
Zimbabwe union on strike
About 200 people from Zimbabwe’s main trade union on Saturday marched to government offices in Harare to demand that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe fix the ailing economy and fulfill an election promise to create over 2 million jobs. Workers belonging to the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) also protested against proposed salary and job cuts for civil servants. The union held similar demonstrations in five cities across the country. The country’s finance ministry in November last year projected economic growth of 3.2 percent this year, up from 3.1 percent last year.
TELECOMS
Sprint to pay for wiretaps
Sprint Communications Inc has agreed to pay US$15.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the telephone carrier overcharged the US government to collect and deliver information gathered under court-ordered wiretaps. The settlement announced late on Thursday revolves around a dispute about how Sprint billed the US FBI, the US Drug Enforcement Administration and several other federal agencies for wiretapping expenses. The government alleged that Sprint had included items that did not qualify for reimbursement under US Federal Communications Commission regulations.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured