UNITED KINGDOM
Tax paves way for surplus
The UK last month posted a surplus as the government’s tax take was boosted by the first payments under a surcharge on banks introduced last year. Government income exceeded spending by £977 million (US$1.28 billion), compared with £1.17 billion a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said yesterday. Receipts rose 3.4 percent, while spending was up 1.3 percent. Income was boosted by an 8.4 percent jump in corporation tax to £7.5 billion. Half of the increase was due to the Bank Corporation Tax surcharge of 8 percent.
TOURISM
Mauritius raises forecast
Mauritius yesterday said that tourism revenue this year will be 1.8 percent higher than it had previously forecast, after a surge in visitors during the first half. Earnings from the sector are now expected to reach 56 billion Mauritian rupees (US$1.6 billion) this year, up from an earlier forecast of 55 billion rupees in May, according to Statistics Mauritius. Last year, tourism earnings totaled 50.2 billion rupees. The statistics agency also raised its forecast for this year’s arrivals from 1.24 million tourists to 1.25 million. Visitors numbered 1,151,723 last year. In the first half of this year, Mauritius attracted 586,464 tourists, up 9.9 percent from a year earlier.
AIRLINES
Thai eyes new planes
Thai Airways International PCL plans to add routes and buy new, more fuel-efficient aircraft to replace aging jets, president Charamporn Jotikasthira said in an interview in Bangkok on Wednesday. The airline, which last ordered planes in 2011, is drawing up a 10-year plan through 2027 that will include the aircraft purchases to help boost passenger growth, he said. Thai Airways still has 14 new aircraft due to be delivered through 2018 and the carrier has 94 planes in operation. Cost cuts and a decline in oil prices helped Thai Airways return to profit in the first half and have fueled a 191 percent surge in the company’s shares this year. The stock slumped 37 percent last year.
MOTORCYCLES
Harley settles suit with US
US motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson on Thursday entered a US$15 million settlement with US authorities, who accused the company of making and selling illegal devices that increased air pollution from its bikes. The company agreed to buy back and cease selling so-called “super tuners,” which improved performance, but increased hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions. The company has produced and sold about 340,000 of the devices, which are prohibited according to the US Clean Air Act, the US Department of Justice said. Last year, the company sold about 265,000 motorcycles worldwide and 168,000 in the US.
BANKING
Fired official refuses reward
A former Deutsche Bank AG risk officer said he was refusing an US$8.25 million reward from the Securities and Exchange Commission for blowing the whistle on the lender overvaluing a derivatives portfolio, because of his concern that the commission did not go after senior executives. The US$55 million fine that Deutsche Bank paid in a settlement announced by the commission in May last year had penalized shareholders, while top executives retired with their multimillion dollar bonuses intact, Eric Ben-Artzi wrote in a Financial Times column published yesterday. Ben-Artzi sued Deutsche Bank for wrongful dismissal in 2012.
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
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
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