AUSTRALIA
Home prices outpace wages
Home prices in Australia’s biggest city have surged more than five times faster than wages in each of the past two years, adding to fears of a housing bubble. Wages in New South Wales State, where 60 percent of the population resides in Sydney, climbed 2.5 percent in 2013 and 2.4 percent last year, compared with gains of 12.4 percent and 14.5 percent respectively for homes in the nation’s most populous city and financial hub, according to government and CoreLogic Inc data compiled by Bloomberg. Sydney house and apartment prices have soared by 40 percent from their May 2012 trough to a record.
PETROLEUM
BP Q1 profit surprises
BP PLC reported first-quarter profit that was more than double analysts’ estimates as earnings from refining and trading offset lower crude prices. The first results this year from the world’s largest oil companies demonstrate the protection against lower prices gained from processing and selling fuel. France’s Total SA also reported better-than-expected earnings yesterday. BP CEO Bob Dudley is setting the company up for a longer period of low oil prices by slashing spending, reviewing new projects and selling assets.
AUTOMAKERS
BYD sells US electric buses
BYD Co (比亞迪), the Chinese automaker part-owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, projected it would sell as many as 200 electric buses in the US this year after securing its biggest order from a mass-transit operator. The company won the contract in the US from the Long Beach Transit Authority, which serves portions of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, BYD senior vice president Stella Li (李珂) said in a telephone interview.
AUTOMAKERS
Honda net profit down 8.9%
Honda Motor Co yesterday said that its fiscal-year net profit fell by 8.9 percent to US$4.4 billion as Japan’s No. 3 automaker grapples with soaring recall costs, including from an exploding airbag crisis linked to at least five deaths. The Civic maker downgraded its profit forecasts twice before the results were published yesterday, as it warned the airbag scandal at supplier Takata Corp would take a toll on its bottom line, as well as falling demand in Japan and the world’s biggest vehicle market, China. The company said it earned ¥522.7 billion (US$4.4 billion) in the year through last month — worse than its most recent estimate of ¥545 billion in profit and missing analyst expectations — while operating profit dropped by 13 percent to ¥651.6 billion.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last