CHINA
Shadow banks targeted
Underground banks did more than 1 trillion yuan (US$152 billion) in transactions last year and the government will step up efforts to combat the problem this year, state media said yesterday citing the foreign exchange regulator. Zhang Shenghui (張生會), head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange’s inspection division, told Xinhua news agency his department last year had participated in breaking up more than 60 underground banks suspected of doing more than 1 trillion yuan in transactions. The regulator will also demand that above-board banks increase their oversight of any suspicious activities, and will also look more closely at securities, insurance and third-party payments providers, Zhang added.
MINING
Rio Tinto mulls partner
Rio Tinto Group chief executive officer Sam Walsh said finding a Chinese partner to help fund the company’s US$1.9 billion bauxite project in Australia is one of many options under consideration, the Australian reported yesterday. Rio would retain a majority interest in the project, Walsh told the newspaper in an interview. Other options under consideration include third-party leasing of “some parts of equipment,” Walsh said. The company first highlighted interest from China in the project, near Weipa in the state of Queensland, in November last year.
SMARTPHONES
New iPhone due next month
Apple Inc is on target to introduce its next iPhone and iPad models on March 15, and aims to start selling the devices in the same week, technology blog 9to5Mac reported, citing sources. Apple, which is to introduce a new 4-inch iPhone, dubbed the “iPhone 5se,” and a new iPad Air at a launch event, is unlikely to take pre-orders for the new devices, the blog reported. The new 4-inch iPhone 5se is designed to spur iPhone hardware upgrades for customer seeking faster devices without upgrading to the far larger iPhone 6S and 6S Plus screen sizes. Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.
STEELMAKERS
Thyssenkrupp suffers loss
Thyssenkrupp AG, Germany’s largest steelmaker, swung to a net loss in the fiscal first quarter as the industry reeled from a slide in prices wrought by record Chinese exports. The net loss was 23 million euros (US$26 million) in the three months through Dec. 31, last year, compared with net income of 50 million euros a year earlier, the company said on Friday. Adjusted earnings before interest and taxes declined 26 percent to 234 million euros, just missing the 239.6 million-euro average of 11 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The company reiterated a full-year profit target of 1.6 billion to 1.9 billion euros.
FRANCE
Court to try Facebook
A French court ruled on Friday that a case against Facebook Inc over a painting of a nude woman can be tried in France, rejecting Facebook’s argument that it is governed by Californian law. Facebook blocked the account of a French professor and art lover after he uploaded a picture of Gustave Courbet’s 1866 canvas The Origin of the World, which shows a close-up view of female genitals. The Paris Appeal Court’s decision upheld a lower court ruling in March last year that a clause in Facebook’s terms of agreement signed by users was “abusive” in reserving exclusive rights to a California court to hear disputes.
BANKING
Moynihan given US$16m
Bank of America Corp awarded chief executive officer Brian Moynihan US$16 million for his work last year, raising his potential compensation 23 percent. Moynihan received US$14.5 million in stock grants for last year and left his salary unchanged at US$1.5 million, according to a regulatory filing on Friday. A year earlier, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank gave the CEO of the second-biggest US bank a US$13 million pay package. Half of what the bank granted Moynihan for last year is in the form of stock linked to performance over a three-year period through 2018, according to the filing.
FINANCE
Grupo plans job cuts
Grupo BTG Pactual SA, the Brazilian investment bank that sought rescue financing after the arrest of its founder, is planning to announce more job cuts, this time in London and some Latin America countries excluding Brazil, said people familiar with the matter. The Sao Paulo-based bank, which fired 305 of its 1,653-person workforce in Brazil and made cuts at the New York office on Jan. 28, will reduce bonuses to executives this year and pay them in two tranches: 30 percent in February and 70 percent in November, the people said. The announcements of the job cuts and change on the bonus payments may happen on Feb. 22, some of the people said.
ANGOLA
S&P downgrades rating
Standard & Poor’s (S&P) on Friday cut Angola’s credit rating one notch to “B” due to the impact of low crude prices on the oil-exporting African nation, as well as the slump in its currency. The credit ratings agency said the prospect of low oil prices continuing for the next couple of years would impair “Angola’s external flows and stocks, government debt stocks and the pace of economic growth given the country’s dependence on the oil sector.” S&P said the outlook is stable on the “B” rating, a speculative grade considered as an undesirable investment with little assurance of payment over any long period of time.
EUROZONE
Lose 500-euro note: ministers
Europe’s 500-euro note is so tainted by its association with money laundering, the black market and terrorist financing it should be withdrawn from circulation, EU finance ministers said on Friday. The colorful violet 500-euro note is the largest eurozone unit, but Europol, the EU’s police agency, has long suspected that criminals find it a useful way of moving large sums of money around without the authorities knowing. The 500-euro note accounts for 3 percent of the total euro notes in circulation, but represents 28 percent by value, according to European Central Bank data.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Glaxo fined US$54.3 million
GlaxoSmithKline PLC was fined £37.6 million (US$54.3 million) by the UK’s antitrust watchdog over pay-for-delay deals that held back sales of cheaper, generic versions of its anti-depressant Seroxat. The London-based drugmaker colluded with other companies from 2001 to 2004 by agreeing to make payments “and other value transfers totaling more than £50 million to suppliers of generic versions of paroxetine,” the Competition and Markets Authority said on Friday. Glaxo said in a statement that the company is considering its grounds for appeal. Mylan NV and German drugmaker Merck KGaA were also fined a total of £5.8 million as part of the probe.
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
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day