A US court ruling on Wednesday cleared the way for Argentina to pay its debts and return to global credit markets early next week, as a new president tries to turn the page on almost a decade and a half of messy defaults and litigation.
The ruling in a US appeals court bolstered markets and brought relief to Argentine President Mauricio Macri, who has spent the first four months of his term resolving a mountain of litigation that followed a US$100 billion default in 2002.
Argentina on Monday plans to launch the sale of its first international bond issue in 15 years, raising funds for a payment on Friday next week to creditors who had resisted prior debt restructurings, an Argentine Ministry of Finance official said.
Macri’s economic team is canvassing New York and London to gauge appetite for a bond that could raise up to US$15 billion to ease government financing and pay more than US$8 billion in settlements to so-called “holdout” creditors.
Argentina had faced a deadline yesterday to pay US$4.65 billion in settlements to four major creditors led by Aurelius Capital Management and Elliott Management’s NML Capital Ltd.
However, those hedge funds’ lawyers said they could wait longer and would not terminate the agreements if Argentina did not make the payment on time.
Still, the holdouts urged the court not to lift injunctions that had given them leverage by preventing Argentina from servicing bonds restructured in 2005 and 2010.
“Argentina’s feet need to be held to the fire,” said Matthew McGill, NML’s lawyer, arguing to keep the injunctions.
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six